GLEQ to honor emerging businesses and innovative ideas on June 12

Cash, prizes, recognition. Sounds like an episode of the Price is Right. Could be, yes, but it's not. It's the Great Lakes Entrepreneur's Quest awards ceremony.

Winning a dishwasher or a set of crystalware on television is pretty exciting but winning $25,000 to invest into your business, or $5000 to further an idea is probably a little more helpful to the entrepreneurs attending the GLEQ award ceremony on June 12 at Michigan State University.

There are two categories: the Emerging Company Award, which first place receives a whopping $25,000 and second $5,000, and the New Business Idea Award, which is $5,000 and $1,000 respectively for first and second place.

Past winners have been Adaptive Materials Inc., Velcura Therapeutics, and TJ Technologies.

This is the eighth year that the folks at GLEQ have had the event and each year the winner goes on to thrive in their markets, Diane Durance, executive director of GLEQ says.

Seventy-nine companies are competing in this final round. Of those companies, IT is the highest percentage of participation at 40, while life sciences files in next at 26 percent.

Durance says this is pretty much the norm, however she has seen a slight increase in alternative energy companies (10 percent of the participants).

"That number is going to grow in the future," she said. "Alternative energy will become larger and larger."

Source: Diane Durance, executive director of Great Lakes Entrepreneur's Quest
Writer: Terry Parris, Jr.