To accelerate visionary entrepreneurs in the green economy, the City of Joburg put millions of rands into a project called the Green City Start-up.
“This initiative is part of the City’s green economy initiative which seeks to develop a greener Johannesburg. The City formed a trust and a competition part of that trust is being held to find green ideas,” said Magriet Mouton, who manages this project from Resolution Circle in Milpark.
The City, on 1 January in collaboration with the University of Johannesburg and Resolution Circle, launched the Green City Start-up Challenge.
Entries were open to start-ups, SMEs and partnerships in any areas of energy, waste, water, transport and or buildings.
“We were looking for people with ideas that provide green solutions to the problems that we face in Johannesburg.”
According to Mouton, 86 ideas in total were entered by the closing date at the end of January.
“A judging panel of 12 entrepreneurs and business leaders has been scoring the entries since 2 February. The top 20 contestants will be announced mid-February,” she said.
The contestants will attend an idea development workshop at Resolution Circle; the University of Johannesburg’s technology commercialisation company and incubator.
Further, the Top 20 will be adjudicated by an awards panel, of which eight ideas will be chosen to receive R250 000 from the City of Joburg to develop their idea for the next round of the competition.
At the end of the competition, one or two winners will receive up to R1-million each to turn their ideas into reality.
Resolution Circle Towers on 17 January, hosted the first Green City Start-up workshop, presented by mentor, idea generator and social entrepreneur, Charles Maisel.
The workshop was focused on inspiring entrepreneurs to think critically and identify business opportunities. This free workshop, sponsored by Resolution Circle, elicited some original and promising ideas from the participants.
Maisel’s “Seeing the Leaves” is a simple technique of teaching how to read the newspaper in a way that frames problems as opportunities, pictures as inspirations for new businesses and stories that require solutions. This technique has also been implemented at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town, corporate and government, as well as schools and in communities.
