THE OPPORTUNITY OF SETTING UP A BUSINESS FOR METU STUDENTS AND GRADUATES!

New Ideas New Businesses 2014 have been started...

The 2014 registration period of Turkey’s greatest and leading entrepreneurship contest, organized by METU and ODTÜ Teknokent for 10 years, ‘New Ideas New Businesses’ has been started. ‘New Ideas New Businesses’, aiming to impose entrepreneurship and innovation on rising generation, is organized by adopting METU’s approach of ‘Not an Employed Graduate but an Employer’.

New Ideas New Businesses provides a backdrop for students and graduates who have innovative and technology based business ideas and support them to implement their ideas and to become a successful businessman.

All students or graduates (not more than 5 years from their graduations) of Bachelors/MS/PHD degrees at any university and any department may join the contest.

Contestants compete with each other in order to win the following monetary rewards…

ELGINKAN FOUNDATION Grand Award	100.000 TL
UNDERSECRETARIAT for DEFENCE INDUSTRY Grand Award	100.000 TL
GENERAL ELECTRIC Grand Awards	200.000 TL
IT CATEGORY Grand Award	100.000 TL
GENERAL ELECTRIC Special Awards	50.000 TL
ARÇELİK Special Award	25.000 TL
ASELSAN Special Award	25.000 TL
MICROSOFT Special Award	25.000 TL
OSTIM Special Award	25.000 TL
TEB Special Award	25.000 TL

Besides the direct monetary rewards, there are many other supports for contestants...

• Office Space in Incubation Center
• Entrepreneurial Training Program
• Mentors
• Consultancy Services
• Investor Meetings
• Network Support
• Intellectual Property Rights Support

‘New Ideas New Businesses’ contest, offers 2 Million TL worth support in total.

Applications can be made via www.yfyi.com until 28^th of April, 2014…

With respect to Technology Development Zones (TDZ) Performance Index which was performed by the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology, once again ODTU Teknokent ranked as the first with 60,45 points, surpassing all other technology development zones.

Technology Development Zones (TDZ) Performance Index was based on 3 categories, 6 dimensions and 36 parameters, by processing the data received from TDZs. In the first dimension of the first index study covering 30 TDRs that were operational by the end of 2011,  supports provided to the management company, exemptions provided to the companies and management company’s expenses have been evaluated within the scope of government subsidies and the expenses of the management company. Within the 2nd dimension, under the scope of R&D competence; R&D projects, expenses and revenues and in the 3rd dimension, import data and company compositions have been evaluated.

Domestic and foreign patent applications and registrations, utility model and brand registrations were included as the 4th dimension, incubation programs and technology transfer office services within the scope of intellectual property rights were evaluated under the 5th dimension and finally, in the 6th dimension, university-industry collaboration, inter-company co-operations and international collaborations were included within the scope of collaboration and interaction.

ODTU Teknokent was followed in the first 5 by the following technoparks; Bilkent Cyberpark (52,54 points), İTÜ Arı Teknokent (50,48 points), Sakarya (46,78 points), and İzmir (45,96 points).