The Creative Business Cup (CBC) is the world championships for the creative industries.
Each year national CBC competitions take place around the world to select the best creative start-ups in more than 60 national ecosystems. In November, during Global Entrepreneurship Week each participating country sends their winning start-up to the global final in Denmark to compete for the coveted Creative Business Cup.
This year, for the first time, Global Entrepreneurship Network UK, hosted an open call for UK start-ups in the creative industries to pitch to a panel of expert judges to win the right to represent the United Kingdom on this global stage.
At the UK final in London on Oct 12 food waste app Yellow Label beat stiff competition to be selected to represent the UK in the global final.
Yellow Label is a UK wide app for discounted goods that are due to expire. Yellow label works by connecting consumers to listings of ‘yellow label’ food which is about to expire in local supermarkets. The app, which is currently operating in beta in and around Leeds provides an incentive for both the supplier and the customer, increasing sales of perishable products which would otherwise be headed for landfill, and offering users perfectly good food at bargain prices using an innovative interface. Each year in the UK billions of pounds perfectly good food goes directly to landfill because it cannot be sold, with huge economic and environmental impacts at all levels of the supply chain.
Pitching to the judges, Yellow Label Co-founder Toma Paro explained that “our app prevents food waste and saves you money by advertising and enabling the sale of ‘Yellow Label’ goods. Through our innovative solution, we can make sure items aren’t needlessly thrown away, and everyone in society can benefit!”
Despite reservations around the IP of Yellow Label, the judges were impressed with the core concept and the quality of the pitch from Tomo, and voted unanimously to send Yellow Label to the global final.
The judges agreed that Yellow Label met the CBC criteria of an innovative business that uses technology to solve a real world problem in a creative way, while not being a pure ‘tech’ proposition.
CBC founder Rasmus Wiinstedt Tschering recognised the challenge of defining a business as creative, something that is left to each national partner.
“We are seen a bit difficult because we are called ‘Creative Business Cup’. But aren’t all businesses creative if they are successful? Yes, they are! And it’s also difficult for the jury every year to define what constitutes creativity.”
In the UK alone the Creative Industries, defined by the UK DCMS as industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property ‘are worth £84.1 billion to the UK economy annually.
Outlining the CBC agenda, and welcoming Yellow Label to the global final, Rasmums added that “CBC is focusing on a certain kind of start-up. We believe in CBC that tech is understood, something that all companies work with, so calling it medtech, edtech, clean tech etc. doesn’t make sense; these are start-ups in education, in medical or in clean environment. So we look for start-ups that are not necessarily run by engineers>”
(EMBED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=i62JdhbheDk)
The Global CBC final is a featured event of Global Entrepreneurship Week in November and the event forms the centrepiece of a week of events designed to empower and support entrepreneurs in the creative industries as they seek to change the world and impact the global economy.
Congratulations to Yellow Label!