IDEA Innovation Center was founded in 2015 as an incubator-accelerator for startups and an entrepreneurship hub for Cypriot young entrepreneurs.
Today IDEA is the largest, non-profit, comprehensive organization in Cyprus which forms a cluster of private and public partnerships to support startups and innovative Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).
It hosts startup companies offering them the highest quality of training and services, so as to turn their innovative ideas into viable businesses with a global outlook. Specifically, it provides aspiring entrepreneurs all the tools to gradually turn their idea into a profitable business:
It offers the entire spectrum of business support: from the Idea-stage to Sales & Investment and then to Expansion abroad
It creates new SME companies every year & new job positions
It educates teenagers, students, youth and strongly fosters female entrepreneurship
It promotes Cyprus abroad, strengthens the European innovation bond and elevates the country higher on the international innovation map, a bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa
It implements the cooperation between the Public – Private Sector, as a key Government Partner
It creates an investment stream for young entrepreneurs through an internal angel investor network
It promotes the culture of “giving back” to the society, “sharing” and “volunteering”, by addressing the noble feelings of successful Cypriot businesspersons and engaging organisations
It facilitates fintech solutions and promotes digital transformation through its direct partnership with Bank of Cyprus
It promotes intrapreneurship by developing mechanisms that allow for the staff of an organisation to create innovative products or services
Within all the support we offer, we emphasize that the major success factor for entrepreneurs is themselves: their passion, their determination, their sense of urgency, their hard work, their willingness to give and take.
Since its establishment, IDEA supported 57 new businesses with over 125 entrepreneurs and helped to create more than 80 new jobs.
A testament of our hard work, IDEA Innovation Centre was the 2019 European Winner in Investing in Entrepreneurial Skills, surpassing 29 other countries, in the European Commission’s ‘Enterprise Promotion Awards’. This was an extremely significant international distinction, capping IDEA’s long list of accolades both in Cyprus and overseas, underscoring its leading role in promoting entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.
“Give, share and take” is the IDEA culture
IDEA Innovation Center was founded by the Bank of Cyprus and other partners, and is mainly supported by the bank as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility. Crucial to our success is the valuable support of our strong partners: Cyprus Telecommunications Authority – CYTA, Innovation-Leo Burnett, Lellos P. Demetriades and Deloitte Cyprus. We are delighted to see that more and more partners are joining our vision and we are happy to have today on board Kinisis Ventures, OEB, JCC Payment Systems, AWS, ASBIS, Logicom Solutions, Eraclis Papachristou Architects and Christos P. Theodorou Architectural Office.
We love what we do, and we aspire to create investible startups and change the Cypriot culture towards entrepreneurship, elevating Cyprus higher on the innovation map. We would like to see Cyprus becoming the bridge between the innovation hubs of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Our greater vision is to constitute Cyprus as a regional innovation hub.
