Awards for innovative ideas

The Centre for Business and Technological Development of Crete asked 15-year-old gymnasio (lower secondary school) pupils in Crete to imagine and mentally organize their own businesses. Pupils from schools across Crete took part in the competition. The best were awarded prizes at special ceremonies held in Heraklion and Chania. The aim of the competition was to familiarize the children with the concept of entrepreneurship, placing themselves in the entrepreneur’s position and imagining what they would want their business to be like, finding sources of funding and planning their business units to be innovative, competitive and viable.

Eleftheria Retsiou from the 1st Gymnasio of Agios Nikolaos won first prize for her idea of renovating the houses of an abandoned Lassithi village to create an agrotourism hotel.

In second place was Yannis Grammatikakis from Mochos Gymnasio. Lining in an area where most people are stock farmers, he thought of establishing a cattle farm where the animals would be fed on GM-free fodder and selling the meat. The innovative aspect of Yannis’ idea is beef production. As he said, farmers in the area only have sheep and goats, so a new product would be in greater demand.

His environmental sensitivity led Giorgos Kasapakis of the 3rd Gymnasio of Heraklion to “open” a computer recycling centre. He got the idea from seeing customers in his father’s shop just throwing away machines that could easily be reused.

Her love of horses was the inspiration for Katerina Paraskevoudaki. Her idea of creating a ranch-hotel won her fourth prize for best business concept.

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