Procedure of the CEC

How to participate & Competition Criteria

The dates and deadlines for 2025 will be announced shortly.

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Step 1


Register online and create your account or log in. You will receive a confirmation email to activate your account. You will then go through a short registration process where you can provide detailed information about yourself. If you can't find the email, check your spam folder.

Note: The CEC will be held in English. Therefore, only submissions in English can be considered.

Step 2


To participate in the CEC, you must submit an idea or project that addresses one of the 17 UN SDGs. In your dashboard, you can create your idea or project under „My Ideas/Projects”. 

First, explain your idea or project in a short pitch and submit this pitch via the „My Idea/Project” dashboard. Please note that you create an idea as „Idea” and a project as „Project”. If you create an idea as a project and vice versa, we will unfortunately not be able to consider your submission.

We (Stiftung Entrepreneurship) will then decide whether your idea/project meets the competition criteria. If you are accepted, you have around 2 months to work on your idea/project.

In order to participate in the voting phase, you must have completed both courses („Brains versus Capital” & „Sustainable Entrepreneurship”) and filled out the Entrepreneurial Design Canvas (EDC) entirely before your idea/project can participate in the voting phase. (Fyi: You can also submit your idea/project for voting before the start of the voting phase. However, the idea/project will only become publicly visible after the start of the voting phase.)

You are free to share your idea/project with either just your campus friends or the entire campus community before the voting phase. Feedback from other campus members may help you to develop your idea/project. Your ideas and projects will not be visible to non-registered users.

Please note that there may not be enough time to review your submission and meet all CEC participation requirements.

Step 3


If you have successfully completed and finished both courses and the EDC by the time the voting starts and you have submitted your idea/project for voting, your idea/project will participate in the voting phase and will automatically be published on the public entrepreneurship website. This will make your idea/project visible to non-registered users. This way also non-registered users can vote for ideas and projects.

Make sure that your idea/project page is well presented and filled by then. This will increase your chances of collecting votes.

During this time, campus members and other users have the opportunity to vote for ideas and projects. The 10 ideas and projects with the most votes will move on to the finals and will be viewed and evaluated by our expert jury. Our jurors will decide on the ranking and the winners. Based on a questionnaire, the judges award points for entrepreneurial vision, feasibility, innovation, leadership, social impact and sustainability.

Difference between idea and project

Idea
All entries must include an innovative solution or proposal for a business that addresses the Sustainable Development Goals. It may be in the conception, planning, or start-up phase, but must not yet have resulted in a start-up.

Project
All entries must consist of innovative projects carried out by existing businesses in the form of companies, NGOs or informal programs.

Important: Please make sure that you have the rights for everything you upload! You can find licence free images on Unsplash and Pixabay. If you upload copyrighted images, audios etc., you have to cover the costs for any legal issues.

Status of your idea/project

You can view the status of your submission at any time in the dashboard under "My idea/project" in the particular idea/project. You can submit multiple ideas and projects.

Please note: If we still have questions about your pitch in step 1, you have the option to redo and resubmit your pitch. Unfortunately, rejected submissions will not be able to participate in CEC 2023. A submission would only be possible again for the next CEC.

Anything still unclear? Check our FAQs!

Community Guidelines and Privacy Policy

Please read the CEC terms of use, our Community Guidelines and the Privacy Policy carefully and thoroughly. By participating in the CEC, you acknowledge that you have read and understand the Privacy Policy and that you will comply with it.

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