Contest calls for ideas

They say necessity is the mother of invention.

Just ask Jay Hughes of Mount Pleasant, who after years of heavy snoring and keeping his wife awake at night, brainstormed his own cure.

"My wife would have to roll me over in the middle of the night," Hughes said. "She'd have a bad day because she never got enough sleep at night."

Hughes came up with the idea for Z Box, a compact medical device that can improve breathing for people with mild to severe forms of sleep apnea.

He submitted his idea to the New Ideas for a New Carolina Contest last year and won $2,500 of seed money to develop the device.

Contest organizers hope this year's program brings forth more submissions to spark entrepreneurial innovation in South Carolina and help make the state more competitive in emerging industries, said Lindsey Spires, project and research coordinator for New Carolina.

The deadline for submissions is Dec. 2.

Spires said that without the program, ideas such as the Z Box might still be hidden away on people's computer hard drives, never realizing their potential.

"One of our main missions is to declare independence from mediocrity," Spires said. "We know there are individuals throughout the state sitting at home full of ideas, but who lack the funding to make their idea happen."

The grand prize award includes $5,000 dollars of seed money, and the winner will be paired with a team of business mentors from around the state to help cultivate the winning idea. The contest also includes cash prizes for first-place winners and honorable mentions.

Winners will be announced at the ThinkTEC Innovation Summit in Charleston on Feb. 11.