Idea to Prototype to Company: all University of Connecticut students who have an innovative business or product idea are eligible to enter the second annual UConn Innovation Quest (iQ) competition, which will be accepting applications until April 1, 2013. Winners of the competition and selected runners-up will have the opportunity to build their business as part of an incubator training program called the inQbator, with a grand prize opportunity of $15,000 to put towards the start of a business. Adam Boyajian ’12, whose idea was one of the few chosen for the program through last year’s competition, shares, “The inQbator program finally forced us to sit down and think about how to scale our business.”

The iQ competition was brought to UConn at the encouragement of Keith R. Fox ’80, a longtime entrepreneur, executive and philanthropist who offered to sponsor the contest after seeing its success at Cal Poly. “[Innovation Quest is] really a vision that Carson [Chen] started [at Cal Poly], about fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in our young people, in the students… with a mission of helping them to create companies and ultimately jobs here in the United States,” explains Fox in “What is Innovation Quest,” one of a series of FAQ videos that can be accessed here.

Applications for this year’s Innovation Quest competition will be accepted until Monday, April 1 at 11:59 p.m.

Competition Application – http://uconn.biz/iq2013application

Innovation Quest Video FAQs – http://uconn.biz/iq2013faq

Questions? Contact Nadav (nadav@sobrioapp.com) or Tom (tom@sobrioapp.com)