Rikardo Lamadrid, Director of Technology and Advanced Learning at the Department of Education, along with Jon Labaka, Executive Director of Tknika, presented the Provider Awards this morning in Zamudio; These awards recognize the most innovative technology business initiatives created by Vocational Training students. The event was also attended by Olatz Goitia, General Manager of BEAZ, and Joseba Mariezkurrena, Director of Entrepreneurship and Business Competitiveness at BFA.

The award ceremony for this second edition of Provider was carried out with the help of a collaborating robot, in the BIC Bizkaia building, in the Zamudio Technology Park. The provider is the result of a collaboration between Tknika (Basque Center for Applied Research in Vocational Training, Department of Education) and BEAZ-Bizkaia (a public company of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, supporting companies and entrepreneurs).

Provider’s goal is not only to create businesses and promote an entrepreneurial culture among young people, although that is also his role. The main objective of the initiative is to promote the business network of services for Industry 4.0 in the Basque Country. That is, creating providers of smart factory solutions. To this end, it turns to the Vocational Training quarry, thus recognizing and rewarding students ’talent, entrepreneurial sensitivity and innovative ability.

Award-winning projects

In this second edition of Provider, seven entrepreneurial projects have been submitted to the award, and the winners have been:

•  DESIGN ME. It is a project that integrates virtual reality and 3D printing technologies; in which, through virtual reality glasses, the user can create and model the pieces in 3D for later printing.
• VERTEX. It is a 3D printing project; in which 3D printers are designed and manufactured, based on technology developed by PRUSA, which integrates the components developed by VERTEX and thus increases the capacity of the printing volume.

Both projects have received a cash prize of one thousand euros. But they will also have the advice of BICBizkaia technicians and direct access to the entrepreneurship room (Zamudio) of this business seminar for six months. In this way, they will be able to take the first steps and work on their business project and, in a few months, make that project a reality.

Two phases: awareness and competition

The provider program has two phases: the first phase, which raises awareness among students, and the second, the competition phase for business projects.
The first phase, awareness-raising, involves bringing some disruptive technologies that are in line with the end goal of the program to VET students through a series of outreach sessions. In this edition, the conference focused on technologies such as Blockchain and big data, cybersecurity, drones and collaborative robotics, and 3D printing. The aim is to make students aware of these technologies so that they can then work on their entrepreneurial proposals. They are also familiar with the experiences of entrepreneurs who have turned their proposals into companies.

In this second edition of Provider, 17 Bizkaia primary schools have taken part in awareness-raising conferences; in them, there are more than 340 students.

In the second phase, the competition phase of innovative business projects, seven projects were submitted, including the two previously awarded.