€7,000 win for online platform where students can search words or terms and receive a list of academic definitions from related published literature
Daniel Connolly, a 4th year BBS (Hons) Marketing student, is the winner of the Best New Idea category for Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur in County Waterford, winning €7,000 to invest in the development of his idea.
Daniel explains “The idea, called DeFynd, is to develop an online platform that will allow students to search words or terms and receive a list of academic definitions which the platform has extracted from related published literature. Students can then use the academic definitions in their research. In essence, the platform will be used by students as a research tool to help them locate the relevant literature required to complete their academic writing. Inspiration for the idea came to me when I found myself spending large amounts of time reading through books and journal articles simply looking for academic definitions for terms or words, so I thought to myself a search engine for this would save students a substantial amount of time.”
Lifelong ambition to own a business
“I am over the moon to have won a competition like this, it’s been my lifelong ambition to own a business and hopefully this is the first step on the path to doing so. I have gained invaluable skills and experience from studying at WIT”.
Speaking about Daniel’s success, Dr Thomas O’Toole, Head of the School of Business, WIT, said: “It is great to see one of our budding entrepreneurs on our BBS (Hons) Marketing programme. Ideas are the basis for the new competition in our fast-changing world today. The School is delighted for Daniel.”
Dr Ethel Claffey, Stream Leader - BBS (Hons) Marketing, WIT, added “Daniel is a wonderful student, we are very proud of his achievement and we are very excited to see where this idea and award takes him in the future".
Daniel will participate in the regional finals in June 2019 and then, should he win, he will progress to the national finals later this year.
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SETU Waterford, Cork Road, Waterford City, 
