Business innovation competition at K-Days gives $20,000 in prize money
Four Alberta small businesses are $5,000 richer after a business innovation competition that ended Sunday at K-Days.
Northlands, in conjunction with the Canadian National Exhibition, hosted the first Edmonton CNE Innovation Garage Competition.
Entrepreneurs from across Alberta pitched their business concepts to a panel of judges on Friday and Saturday. Winners were chosen in four categories and their companies received a $5,000 cash prize and a spot in the semifinal competition on Sunday.
Ceres Solutions of Olds, and ezReferral of Edmonton were the winners in the agri-tech and food tech and social innovation categories respectively.
They will go on to represent Alberta at the national competition next month at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.
The semifinalists competing Sunday included Calgary’s Cups2Go, an innovative drink tray company in the lifestyle innovation category, and Edmonton’s vrCAVE, a virtual reality entertainment company in the virtual/ augmenting reality category.
Alex Villeneuve, owner of Ceres Solutions, said the company uses spent grain that breweries consider waste to grow gourmet mushrooms.
After the mushrooms are picked, the grain is then repurposed again to make animal feed pellets.
He said the win validates the work he’s been doing over the past few years and that the public feedback at the K-Days event was encouraging.
“People are really excited about a business model where we take a waste product (and) we grow something that’s a really highvalue food product for Alberta restaurants,” he said.
Andree Vincent, a medical and MBA student at the University of Alberta, said many people came to her this weekend saying they wanted to see their doctors on board with ezReferral.
The company, a cloud-based health-care referral communication system, is designed to simplify the referral process by saving doctors the hassle of making multiple faxes and phone calls.
Her father, Edmonton family physician Dr. Denis Vincent, came up with the idea after seeing patients die following a lack of timely medical treatment that required referrals.
“I was surprised at how many people came up to (our booth) asking questions.”
Ceres Solutions and ezReferral plan to compete next month for a $25,000 cash prize at the CNE innovation garage’s main competition in Toronto.