The VC announced and launched the Vice Chancellor's Annual IU Innovation Award on 16 th February during the Vc's forum with students. This is a competititon involving all students of the University.The award will be for the top three innovators in each of the three Schools(i.e, ICT, Business and Law).

At the Launch a company owned by a local young entrepreneur - Chris Kinuthia the MD of Globefinity Systems LTD. contributed Kshs. 30,000/- to the innovation fund. The University has received pledges from other companies like Futuristic LTD. , Family Bank and others.

Purpose
The purpose of the activity is to ignite the innovation/entrepreneurial spark among students and staff and to publicize the intellectual capacity of our IU graduates and to market the students to industry. The competition is open to all students in any year of their academic study.

Requirements
» Development of a business concept that can be applied to solve some practical problems in business or
» A business idea put in the form of a business proposal or
» Repackaging of an existing business in the new ICT/global environment and is of some business value and interest or
» A software/hardware application solving some business or community solutions to some identified problems
» Presentation of the proposal to prospective clients and business and university community.

Awards
The awards are as follows:
Best entrepreneur of the year: KShs 20,000
Second best entrepreneur: KShs 10,000
Third best entrepreneur: KShs 5,000

Selection Criteria
The participants will be required to register and submit a maximum of 1 page concept paper by 15th July 2010 and the final 6 proposals from each school shall be submitted for the final competition in October 2010.
The groups may come from the same area of application or a multidisciplinary area and working as a team. Ideas may be sourced from industry or community based needs or problems that are of business or social value to meet a market or social need.

Some of the best projects with well articulated business plans may be considered for further development with interested clients or incubated at the University.