HSBC Young Entrepreneurship Awards 2005

For all the budding entrepreneurs in our local universities, you may be interested to know that the HSBC Young Entrepreneurship Awards (YEA) is once again open for applications.

HSBC Young Entrepreneur Awards is a regional business plan writing competition, inviting talented post-secondary students from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand to display their creativity and business acumen.

The local competition will take place from September 2005 to March 2006. Gold Award winners from each country or territory will compete for the Best of the Best Awards in Hong Kong in June 2006, following by a rewarding US study tour.

As reported in the Star, "undergraduates from public and private institutions of higher learning are invited to submit innovative and commercially viable business ideas that have the potential to become successful ventures."

The competition is divided into three rounds and is open to undergraduates aged between 17 and 25 who must form teams of no more than three.

For Round One:

• The team must submit an outline of an innovative business idea that addresses the existing market needs or explores the new market niche. The business idea can be based on a product or a service or anything that create income or value. The idea will be judged based on the originality of the idea, a creative approach in the business strategy, commercial viability and prospect of growth.
  
  
• Business idea in Round 1 must be submitted ONLINE via Official Website, www.asiayea.com
  
  
• It should be written in English only and be of a maximum length of 1,000 words.
  
  
• Deadline for submission is 10 November 2005.
  
  
• Only 30 teams will be short-listed for Round 2.

The online registration form is to be submitted via the official YEA website. The closing date for Round One submissions is Nov 10.

I would strongly encourage the local undergraduates to take part in competitions such as this. The shortcomings of these types of competitions are that they may not be well-judged and less deserved candidates may end up winning the top prizes. However, the entire exercise of working with a team, harnessing each other's strengths to come up with the most fine-tuned business ideas as well as the practice to write a business plan will certainly play a positive part in an undergraduates' personal and professional development.

For those interested in setting up teams, and who are interested in a informal mentor, I'll be happy to help - assuming that there aren't too many groups. :) Don't expect me to write or edit the business plans for you (you wish!) but I'd certainly be more than happy to read your works and provide my personal feedbacks on the plans and ideas, to help you improve them further. Email me if you are keen.

Good luck!