Aspiring entrepreneurs, keep your wallets open, because cash prizes totaling $30,000 are up for grabs in an upcoming contest in March 2015. The U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) is hosting a nationwide competition for aspiring entrepreneurs entitled “InnovateHer Challenge:2015 Innovating for Women Challenge”. The goal is to aid the lives of women and their families through the creation of new and innovative products and services.
The SBA seeks to illuminate the crucial role that women play in the workforce and in the country’s economic growth as a whole, and through the creation of products geared towards women, such as a website strictly designed for promoting babysitters or a door to door service that includes a slew of home-cooked recipes, they seek to acknowledge and support the impact that women have in the business world.
Due to these difficult economic times, many households contain two working parents, and maintaining balance between the workplace and the home can be threatened. This challenge will provide a foundation upon which these concerns can be aptly addressed and efficiently managed, by providing women with new means in which to succeed. Ideally, the good or service should fill a need in the marketplace, influence the lives of women in one way or another, and be able to be easily commercialized. Each individual should possess a rough business plan for their proposed product, and they should display some degree of innovation.
The contest will begin March 1st and local organizations will hold contests throughout the month of March. A host of organizations ranging from small universities to popular accelerator programs will select one winner from each locally held contest will be chosen to enter the Semi-Final Round which begins on April 1, 2015.
Semi-finalists are required to send in a nomination package, which should include precise details for their business plan as well as any pertinent information about their organization.
The SBA will select ten entrepreneurs for the finals, which will be hosted in Washington D.C. during National Small Business Week, from May 4-8, 2015. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners will be chosen based on who exhibits the greatest potential for success and expansion.
Cash prizes are $15,000, $10,000, and $5,000, for the respective winners. Prize money will be distrubuted to each business’ respected project leaders and then distributed among his/her team. The competition is open to all United States citizens who are at least eighteen years of age, as well as private entities that are established within the country’s borders.
