The UOC launches the SpinUOC Women's Award to showcase female entrepreneurship

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is launching the SpinUOC Women's Award to support and give a voice to entrepreneurial projects led by women and promoted through Hubbik, the university's entrepreneurship community. Its aim is to highlight female talent in the field of entrepreneurship and expand opportunities for women who want to transform the world with their projects.

At the UOC, 50% of the projects that have gone through SpinUOC, one of the university's main entrepreneurship programmes, have been led by women, rising to 53% in at the last five years.

It is hoped that the SpinUOC Women's Award will become a tool for reducing gender gaps in the fields of technology and entrepreneurship. It will consist of two awards: a first prize of €10,000 with mentoring and a second prize of specialized advice. In addition, all participants will be able to access Hubbik resources and opportunities related to entrepreneurship for one year.

The award is aimed at women who have participated in one of Hubbik's programmes over its ten years. Projects can be submitted at any stage of development, as long as they are led or co-led by a woman.

Entries in pitch format

To participate in the contest, entrepreneurs will need to submit a video elevator pitch no longer than 90 seconds, which they will have to upload, together with their details, to a platform set up specifically for this call. The closing date for entries is 18 May. The organizers will check each entrant's previous participation in a Hubbik programme.

The official website for this award contains more detailed information and access to a communication kit with a template for the recommended structure and content for the entrepreneurs' pitch, practical tips for creating a winning video and advice on how to register.

Voting

The call will comprise two phases: the first is a public vote on the videos submitted by candidates and the second is a final assessment by a panel of experts. The videos can be in Catalan, Spanish or English, and the candidate must appear at some point in the pitch.

From 20 May to 1 June the videos will be openly accessible on the organization's website, and voting by the public will take place. The four videos receiving the most votes (until 11:59 p.m. (CEST) on 1 June) will go on to the final phase, in which a jury will assess the communicative quality of the pitch, the feasibility of the project, its social impact and the degree of innovation. The two winners will be announced during the final event of SpinUOC 2025, which will take place on 26 June at the UOC Campus in Barcelona. The finalists selected must commit to attending this event or to sending someone on their behalf.

This call is part of the SpinUOC programme, the UOC's annual entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer programme, and is supported by the Spanish Institute of Women (IMs) through the Innovatia 8.3 project, an initiative promoted by the University of Santiago de Compostela. This initiative could also be co-financed through a grant to reduce the gender gap in the field of ICT, as part of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, funded by the European Union through the Next Generation EU programme.

UOC R&I

The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) is helping overcome pressing challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century by studying interactions between technology and human & social sciences with a specific focus on the network society, e-learning and e-health.

Over 500 researchers and more than 50 research groups work in the UOC's seven faculties, its eLearning Research programme and its two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eHealth Center (eHC).

The university also develops online learning innovations at its eLearning Innovation Center (eLinC), as well as UOC community entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer via the Hubbik platform.

Open knowledge and the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information: research.uoc.edu.