Lake Erie College Hosts 2022 ideaLabs Competition
On Thursday, March 24, 2022, Lake Erie College hosted its internal ideaLabs 2022 Business Concept Competition. LEC students from different disciplines competed for prize money to support the start-up ventures they presented. Cameron Zona ‘22 won with his project, Access Theatre Project, and went on to present at the Entrepreneur Education Consortium (EEC) Final ideaLabs 2022.
Held in COE Conference Room, the event featured presentations from Cameron Zona, Isabella Golen ‘24, and Cole Thomas ‘23. Each student had a limited amount of time to present their new venture ideas, followed by questions from the judges to help define target markets, start-up costs, and advertising messages. The panel of judges included three Lake Erie College alumni, Sam Austin Hardesty ‘16, Ian Hardesty ‘17, and Nemanja Josic ‘17.
First place winner Cameron Zona’s venture is The Access Theatre Project, Northeast Ohio’s premiere Pay-What-You-Will Theater. He hopes to provide high quality, accessible theater to everyone. His winning venture received a $500 prize. Isabella Golen took second place with her venture, LaCork. As a lacrosse player, she presented a plan for cork-based lacrosse balls to reduce rubber waste. She received a $250 prize. In third place, Cole Thomas received a $100 prize for his project, Thomas Targets. With his experience in archery, he proposed a more sustainable kind of archery target to reduce waste.
Cameron and Isabella both qualified for EEC’s Final ideaLabs 2022. Final ideaLabs took place at SmartShape Design in Downtown Cleveland, hosted by Lake Erie College. Cameron finished 3rd out of 15 entries, for a prize of $1,000.
The EEC gives students a chance to explore innovative ideas, preparing them to establish new enterprises or become entrepreneurs within existing organizations. It is comprised of 11 colleges and universities in NE Ohio. For more information on the ideaLabs competition at Lake Erie College, contact Peter Apicella, Director of the center for Entrepreneurship at Lake Erie College, at papicella@lec.edu.