European entrepreneurs, small businesses, academia and research institutes are invited to participate in a competition to develop innovative uses of the planned Galileo global navigation satellite system. The best idea could receive business development support worth 50,000 euros.

The Galileo Masters 2005 competition, sponsored in part by the European Space Agency‘s European Space Incubator, is being run under the patronage of Bavarian Minister for Economic Affairs Otto Wiesheu. It will focus on seven high-tech regions across Europe: London; Gothenburg, Sweden; Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France; the Czech Republic, Varese, Italy; South-Holland, the Netherlands, and Munich, Germany. The satellite navigation system is planned to be operational by 2008.

“To find out information about the signal and then use it for a novel application is the sort of thinking we are looking for in small companies,” Christian Stammel from Anwendungszentrum Oberpfaffenhofen, a European Space Incubator Network member and one of the competition organizers, said in a statement. “Companies must wake up now because in four years they will have to move their businesses in a direction for Galileo.”