Dragons Den style competition final at GCHQ for Intelligent Innovators

GCHQ, in partnership with GFirst LEP, hosted the final of the Intelligent Innovators on the 30th April – a competition for school pupils to come up with new and imaginative business ideas

GCHQ, in partnership with GFirst LEP, hosted the final of the Intelligent Innovators on the 30th April – a competition for school pupils to come up with new and imaginative business ideas.

In a “Dragons’ Den” style competition, the Year 9 (13-14 year-old) pupils from seven Gloucestershire schools had to pitch their ideas to a panel of GCHQ and LEP ‘Dragons’.  All the finalists qualified for today’s event through winning similar competitions in local schools over the last few months.  At each stage they had to demonstrate an innovative idea around a number of different themes. 

The themes pitched to the ‘Dragons’ could include ideas from business technology or mobile devices, through to making a busy business person’s life easier, or even an invention to help people be safer online.  Working in teams of four to six, the pupils had to pitch an idea that included aspects of essential business processes such as finance, advertising and marketing that successfully capitalized their idea.

Deputy Head of Technology at GCHQ and head ‘Dragon’ for the day, said: “Like last year’s competition, hosted by GCHQ, we were really impressed with the quality and range of ideas and enthusiasm that was demonstrated.  All the candidates handled the tough questions extremely well.  It validates how many talented youngsters we have in the county.”

The panel had to consider originality and the usefulness of the students’ ideas, how the teams proposed to market them, their understanding of the costs involved and also how well they presented their ideas to the ‘Dragons.’

The winning team, from Pate’s Grammar School, Cheltenham, impressed the judges with OmniSwype (a glove to control a computer instead of a mouse) that would save space, used wireless technology and had the potential for many applications.  They received a trophy and commemorative shield.  Afterwards the winning captain said: “The whole experience had been very exciting, especially now to be at GCHQ, as that is such a rare opportunity.”

David Owen, Chief Executive, GFirst LEP said: “This is a tremendous opportunity for us to engage with schools and we are proud to partner GCHQ in encouraging young people to think about innovation and the related business processes of successfully taking a product or service to the market.”