News on the Brazilian branch edition of the Kick-off G-BiB competition
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March 10, 2017
After a successful kick-off of the Global Biobased Business Competition (G-BiB) involving German and Dutch teams, which had previously occurred on January in Wageningen (The Netherlands), last Friday, March 10th, Brazilian teams had the opportunity to officially kick-off and engage the competition.
Among the 19 Brazilian teams enrolled, 15 are from the State of São Paulo (USP, UNESP, UNICAMP, CTBE and UNITAU), 2 from Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), one from Minas Gerais (UFMG) and one from Ceará (UFC). Teams gathered at three sites in São Paulo (UNICAMP, USP and UNESP) and interacted live through a videoconference, while teams that could not be present interacted online.
Glaucia Souza from the BIOEN, FAPESP Program for Research on Bioenergy welcomed all the participants and briefly presented the role of BIOEN on R&D and innovation in Brazil. Patricia Osseweijer then presented BE-Basic organization and activities in the world, including actions towards innovation and the organization of the G-BiB competition. Next, each team pitched its idea in a meeting conducted by Patricia Osseweijer live at the USP site and Heitor Cantarella (from BIOEN) present at the UNICAMP site.
Each team has the final challenge of writing an innovative business plan, based on a project for the sustainable production of bio-renewable products such as biofuels and biomaterials, or solutions to support the development of these products.
To close the meeting, a video was presented to introduce the team competitors on relevant issues to be considered when developing a solid business plan. The video was the same presentation that happened live during the European G-BiB kick-off, performed by Jeroen Veenenbos, from Erasmus Center Entrepreneurship, who gave a number of very interesting examples of business plans which were successful and others which failed.
In the next step of the competition, a master class will be offered to the teams, scheduled for May 9th for the Brazilian teams and on April 19th and 26th for the Dutch and German teams respectively, focusing on developing their business final plan to be submitted for the semi-finals. G-BiB competition will offer up to € 10.000 in prizes for the best business project.
The overall final will be in São Paulo with the results announced in October at the next edition of the Brazilian Bioenergy Science & Technology Conference (BBEST 2017) in Campos do Jordão.
