PRIZE FUND

This year we are introducing, for the first time, a prize fund.  In these challenging economic times, we wanted to be able to add further benefits beyond the significant profile and standing that winning a Rushlight Award provides.

 

We are talking to a number of organisations to see if a cash prize can be created.  The success of this cannot be assured, but we will do our best.

 

What we are putting together with considerable success already is a menu of free services which the winners of the awards will be offered access to immediately after the Gala Awards Dinner in January 2011.

 

These services are directly relevant to the needs of companies developing clean technology solutions and these in-kind prizes are of real value.  

 

 

Rules of the Rushlight Prize Fund

1. The prizes, although given a cash value, cannot be exchanged for cash or equivalent liquid funds of any form.

2. All the prizes have an expiry date and will no longer be available after the following year's awards dinner at the latest. Some prizes will have specific expiry conditions.

3. The terms of the prize are set by the donor and Eventure Media Ltd is not a party to the offer unless the prize is being directly offered by Eventure Media Ltd. The prizes themselves are an arrangement between the winner and the prize giver and Eventure Media Ltd is not a party to this arrangement except as a donor. The winner accepts the prize entirely at their own risk. Eventure Media Ltd accepts no responsibility or liability for the prize, the service provided by the donor or any direct or indirect consequences of the winner choosing and accepting the prize.

4. If, for whatever reason, the prize donor cannot provide the prize which they have offered, then the recipient can choose another prize from the remaining alternatives.

5. If more than one winner chooses the same prize, then the donor will be asked how many prizes they are willing to offer. If there are insufficient prizes provided by that donor to meet the demand, then the prize will be allocated on a "first come first served basis". If there is still a tie, then the winners' names will be placed in and then drawn from a hat. The winners who are not successful in the draw will be informed of the result and will have the option of choosing an alternative prize.

6. The order of choosing the prizes shall be as follows:

• First to choose will be the overall Rushlight Award winner
• Next to choose will be the other group category award winners
• Finally, the direct entry award winners will be invited to choose a prize.
• If there are any prizes left, then the invitation to choose a prize may be extended to those entries which are commended by the judges, commencing with the group categories.

7. Each winning entry can only receive one prize in total. An entrant can make two different entries, in which case each entry can attract a prize.

8. The decision of Eventure Media Ltd with regard to the running of the prize system is final and no correspondence will be entered into concerning it.

Prize List

The prize list is currently as follows, in alphabetical order of the prize providers, with details of the providers set out below:

• BIC-Innovation would like to offer you an "Eco Design Review" of one of your Existing or New product developments, working with you to design your product, improving and reducing its overall environmental impact. An Eco Design review will provide detailed and/or systematic analysis at specific stages of either the product development process or lifecycle e.g. eco-indicators; environmental effect analysis; environmental impact assessment; life cycle assessment; material, energy, toxicity, and life cycle cost analysis - value £2,500. 
• Cambium will provide a free, bespoke, Cambium Exchange^TM, which is a short-duration, high impact process that enables an organisation to optimise its strategy and plan for accelerating sustainable, scalable growth in its sales.  A Cambium Exchange^TM is customised to the needs of each client, but includes an assessment of the client's business, people and market in relation to their readiness to drive sustainable growth.  It can be completed within 10 working days from initial contact, subject to the availability of key client stakeholders.  This includes a detailed report of all the outputs within 48 hours of the ‘Exchange'.  This prize is ideally suited to organisations who already have achieved some degree of sales success, but now wish to build a plan that extends this success by accelerating the scalable growth of their business.  This prize incorporating the business assessment, market analysis and a ‘bespoke' one day Exchange ‘event', including a fully documented report on the plan generated, is typically priced at £7,500. More
• Clarkslegal LLP are offering free legal services in any of their areas of expertise - up to a value of £1,000.
• Delta Carbon's partners will provide a full day of investor-readiness preparation for an aspiring start-up that is looking to raise seed or series ‘A' funding. The day will give aspiring low carbon technology companies an insight into investors' mindset in the sector and a tool kit to unlock investment funds - value £2,500.
• Eventure Media Ltd is offering a place in the Rushlight Incubator to an early stage company. This will involve a range of potential types of professional support on the basis of one day a month for 12 months. Value up to £12,000.
• Frost & Sullivan are offering a combination prize as follows:

  1) 12 month User Licence access to one of Frost & Sullivan's 10 sector subscriptions (of their choice) plus 2 hours of consultation with an appropriate expert (growth strategy etc). This would be worth around £10,000.

  2) Seat at our annual Growth Innovation & Leadership congress - £1500

  3) Seat at one of our sector specific networking banquets - £500

  4) Market or Technology report of their choice - £3,000 - £5,000

  Winners who are SMEs can choose 1), 2) and 3) and large companies can choose 2), 3) and 4).  This total package therefore has a value of £7,000 to £12,000.

• FRP Transition offer to search and select either an interim member of management or a Non-Exec Director for a company free of search fees - worth about £10,000.
• Gill Jennings & Every is offering an IP Strategy Review. This would involve a meeting with a partner as well as a trade mark and a patent professional to assess and recommend how to develop the winner's strategy and plan relating to patents, trade marks and designs, including how the IP plan supports the business plan and allows assessment of the risks associated with IP. The output would be a written report. Value of £3,500.
• NW Brown is offering a corporate insurance portfolio review. This involves a full confidential appraisal of the prize-winner(s)' corporate insurance policies, to highlight areas of possible improvement and if appropriate to suggest alternative or additional covers. Value of £1,000.
• A free grant scan, provided by PNO Consultants. PNO will visit the winner to discuss and understand their future projects surrounding their environmental technology and innovation activities. They will then provide a full analysis of principal regional, national and international sources of funding related to their activities. Then the key criteria, scope and timelines of these funds will be identified. Additionally, for each opportunity identified and where available, the following information is provided: a full description of the funding opportunity identified; details of the programme; key criteria; timelines; available budget where appropriate and estimation of the total effort/time required to secure the funding opportunity. Worth up to £5,000.
• Qi3 are offering individual business benchmarking sessions. These sessions identify the gaps in a company's commercial proposition (both for engaging in sales activity and in gaining investors' confidence) and map out the actions required to fill the gaps.
• The Rushlight Incubator is approaching a range of potential clean customers in the UK who will be prepared to be presented to by a cleantech company who wishes to sell their product or services to them. The purpose of this prize is to offer wider market access for a cleantech company, which is achieved through the Rushlight Awards network which can open doors which otherwise are not so readily accessed. 
• TTP is offering to use its considerable expertise in product and technology development and scale up to help winners identify opportunities to improve the competitiveness of their products in the market. This would involve a meeting with the winner to understand their product and business model and then providing a report on opportunities for improvements in the area that the winner wishes to focus on. TTP emphasise that they can only provide ideas for further work within this prize but it is likely to provide a very useful input to the ongoing strategy development of the winners business. Value £6000
• We are collating a group of experienced individuals who are offering their services as mentors to CEOs or boards of early stage companies for a fixed period of time.
• We have a further 18 organisations so far who have said that they wish to participate in this prize fund, offering a range of different benefits including IP studies, technical copywriting, route to market consultancy, film production, technology development consultancy, risk and insurance assessment, project management and communications.

Prize Donors

BIC Innovation Ltd

BIC Innovation is a full service business consultancy undertaking a wide range of UK and international commercial project work for businesses, development organisations and academia. With a team of 16 highly experienced senior staff and associates, we can deliver comprehensive support from concept to market.

Our services cover market research, creativity, new product development, design, technology transfer, the protection and commercialisation of Intellectual Property and project management. Strong strategic skills underpin all our work.

 

Cambium

Cambium specialise in accelerating sales growth of Cleantech, On-line and IT businesses.  More information on our approach and track record can be found at http://www.cambiumllp.com/ alternatively send an email to: sales@cambiumllp.com.

 

Clarkslegal LLP

Clarkslegal LLP offer all of the services you would expect from a leading commercial law firm, from offices in London, Reading, Cardiff and Swansea.  We are genuinely different from other law firms. At Clarkslegal we understand that clients face new challenges, opportunities and problems. We understand that clients don`t want advisors who have little perception of commercial issues. We know that clients want advisers that are flexible and who take a well balanced commercial approach.  Our offices also host the consultants and scientists working for our subsidiary HR and Environmental consultancies, Forbury People and Forbury Environmental. This means that our people work in a highly innovative, multi-disciplinary environment, which is a world away from that of a traditional law firm.

Delta Carbon Capital Partners

Delta Carbon provides advice and investment for the low carbon economy.  We work exclusively with low carbon technology businesses - particularly early-stage businesses - helping them to develop "bankable" and "backable" propositions.  We manage a network of investors with an appetite for low carbon technology.  We are currently raising an investment fund for early-stage low carbon technology investment.

 

Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan is a global growth consulting company with 50 years of expertise in 10 different industry sectors including Energy and Environmental Technologies.  Frost & Sullivan's 1800 industry experts are based in over 40 offices worldwide, with an emphasis on providing local industry expertise and analysis of new market opportunities for corporate growth.  The company is a the world leader in Growth Consulting and the integrated areas of technology research, market research, economic research, corporate best practices, training, customer research, competitive intelligence, and corporate strategy.

 

FRP Transition

FRP Transition is a trading division of FRP Advisory LLP and is a specialist interim management provider.  As the name suggests, the focus is on businesses ‘in transition', a definition covering start-up, change of ownership, growth, entry into new markets, operational and organisational redesign and  turnaround & restructuring. .   Our interim managers operate at board level in line management or programme management roles and include executives who have experience of ‘C'-level roles outside the UK - particularly West, Central and Eastern Europe.

 

Gill Jennings & Every LLP

Gill Jennings & Every LLP is a firm of European Patent & Trade Mark attorneys and is MIP's "UK Patent Prosecution Firm of the Year 2010" and one of very few IP specialist firms top-ranked by all three IP market endorsers. We're over 100 strong, and in 2012, 100 years old (an Olympic celebration!). Rather than just rest on attorney tradition, we have a progressive and very business-minded approach to IP advice (patents, designs, trade marks/brands etc). We do about half our work with UK organizations and entrepreneurs including Universities/spin-outs, early stage/SMEs, investors and household names.  The other half is for multi-nationals and law firms in the US, Japan and the rest of Europe.

 

NW Brown

NW Brown Insurance Brokers Limited has over 30 years experience in finding insurance solutions to protect your business.  We work closely with businesses from start ups, to mature companies in order to fully understand their specific and individual insurance requirements.  We continuously review developments in the insurance market to ensure our clients receive up to date advice.  We appreciate that for an insurance policy to work for you, it is essential that claims are handled effectively.  Our dedicated claims handlers can provide immediate post loss advice and arrange visits where required.

PNO Consultants

We are Europe's leading full-service independent grant consultancy and the only one able to provide services at the same service level throughout the continent.

The world of grants is extremely sophisticated, often challenging and always demanding in terms of resources. We understand it in all of its complexity. We have in-house specialists in a wide variety of fields, from life sciences to aeronautics, plus all the necessary skills to act as an independent partner for any organization seeking public funding.

We combine an understanding of the dynamics of clients´ activities and ambitions with insights into key societal issues that are supported by government funding. The net effect of our contribution is to reduce your workload, increase your return on investment and shorten your time to market.

We provide grant consultancy services throughout Europe to a wide range of clients from SMEs to multinational companies, non-profit organisations, technological platforms, multi-stakeholder partnerships, universities and governments. We employ 400 specialists and have 30 offices in 12 European countries. We operate as CiaoTech in Italy.

 

Qi3

Qi3 offers technology market evaluation for corporate venturing organisations and technology companies; hands-on business development support; and fully comprehensive analysis and advice to companies seeking to improve their performance. We enjoy the buzz of working with New Technology Enterprises with novel technologies, from "virtual companies" with no full-time staff to companies with 50 and over. We also get a kick out of helping divisions of diversified Technology Corporations grow in to new application and geographical markets.  The new Qi3 Accelerator programme provides risk investment supporting companies to rapidly commercialise their products.  We offer funds and commercial management support to businesses in the environmental sustainability and security domains in two modes: "Accelerate to Market" for companies seeking rapid market entry and "Accelerate to Growth" for companies with potential for rapid revenue growth. Qi3 has allocated a significant fund to support a limited number of projects, to ensure that ideas are commercialised to their full potential.

 

TTP plc

TTP is a specialist technology development and consulting firm with over 300 engineers and scientists working across a range of the physical sciences. The company carries out focussed development programs for companies needing new technology, commercialising new technology or looking for radical cost reductions to their products to address business issues such as new regulations, accessing new markets or responding to advances made by their competitors.

We have strengths in areas such as wireless and fixed line communications technology, sensor systems, optics, advanced mechanics and design for reliability and high volume manufacture. This experience is the result of long term involvement in markets including mobile phones, industrial metering and sensing, medical devices and the fast moving consumer goods sectors.  TTP is also a Carbon Trust Entrepreneurs Fast Track partner.