STEPS TO FOLLOW
Note: The Executive Committee (“EC”) of the Professor Ogundipe Innovative Challenge (“POIC”) reserves the right to update these rules at any time. Every attempt will be made to notify participants of any modification to this document; however, it is ultimately the responsibility of POIC participants to stay current with POIC Rules and Regulations.
General Requirements
Team
All team members must be an enrolled student of any Tertiary Institution in Nigeria, as either an undergraduate or postgraduate student with a valid means of identification. No less than two and no more than five (5) members to a team.
Idea Pitch
The proposed idea should be suitable for funding at some level to take it further. The proposed idea should not be in violation of any intellectual property rights as far as you are aware.
Teams or team members that have received any form of venture capital financing for their idea or a likeness thereof may not participate in the competition. Competition participants may not contact POIC judges from any round and judges are not to contact any POIC participants during the course of the Competition.
Prizes
There are both monetary and “in-kind” prizes available for the top three teams. The three teams will receive a prize of N1,000, 000 each. In addition, the three winning teams will be entitled to receive certain other non-monetary prizes (to be announced)
Intellectual Property
Ideas have little value. Only when they are built into real companies or turned into issued patents is any real value realizable. This competition is about building ideas into opportunities – the very first step on the way to possibly building any value. It is customary in these early stages that there is no real intellectual property with any value, unless one of the team members already has at least filed for patents. Investors, in any case, do not sign confidentiality agreements, and entrepreneurs must learn that trust is more important than legal documents.
It is more important to build a team with people that you trust and to rely on the integrity of the judges to respect your ideas. In any case you should only disclose information with which you are comfortable. At this stage, it is not necessary to explain exactly how you do something that might give away “secrets”, but to focus on the size of the opportunity and how you are going to take advantage of it.