PICTI ‘Palestine – BIC' in partnership with Intel launched the Palestine Business Plan Contest 2013. BPC aims to support innovative technology projects and encourage technical entrepreneurship and innovation among students and graduates aged 17-35 years old. It provides the opportunity to represent Palestine at Intel Global Challenge at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. The contest covers all the different science and technology domains including: Information Technology, Communications, Electronics, Energy Technology, Water, Industry, Medicine and Environment. Last year, PICTI [P-BIC] conducted the contest in partnership with all universities in West Bank and Gaza. 60 business plans were received and the local winners were announced and nominated to the regional contest in Amman in which one of them won the second place among the region. PICTI [P-BIC] invites all students and graduates with innovative technology business ideas to participate and register. It is an opportunity which allows them also to be part of PICTI [BIC] other initiatives including the Palestine Innovation Initiative (Pi2) and to join the extensive mentoring and training programmes. Eng. Hasan Omar, Executive Director of PICTI ‘Palestine BIC', said' “BPC is one of the most important initiatives PICTI launched for the past 5 years. As part of the Intel Global Challenge, BPC is a real opportunity and one of the tools towards achieving PICTI's strategic objective of working to identify and support the technical, intellectual and managerial talent of young entrepreneurs who can become the backbone of a dynamic export market for ICT products and services in Palestine.” Ms. Rula Habash, Corporate Affairs Manager in the Levant and North Africa in Intel International Company mentioned, “Intel aims at supporting entrepreneurship in the Middle East through developing partnerships with leading national entrepreneurship development organizations such as Palestine ICT Incubator – PICTI. To promote entrepreneurship among university students, Intel sponsors business plan competitions to reward ideas with potential to be viable businesses and make a positive impact on society.” “We are glad to be sponsoring PICTI business plan competition for several years now, and glad that local business plan competitions feed to the regional ‘Intel Business Challenge – Middle East' where winners compete to gain a seat to the ‘Intel Global Challenge' competition that we organize annually at UC Berkeley. The competitions provide mentorship opportunities to students as they gain experience building business plans to bring innovative technologies to market,” he added. BN
