Banesto, Indra and Alquimia among the winners at the Cinco Dias Awards for Business Innovation 2008

Banesto, Indra and Alquimia have been honored with the Awards for Business Innovation, sponsored by  Spain's leading business daily Cinco Días. It's the awards fist year and coincides with celebrations to mark 30 years of the Economy under Democracy.

The jury, presided over by Virgilio Zapatero, rector of the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, included Adela Cortina, Professor of Social Ethics and Political Philosophy at the Universidad de Valencia; Amparo Moraleda, president of IBM Spain, Portugal, Greece, Israel and Turkey; Rosalía Mera, president of the Fundación Paideia; Maurici Lucena, director general of CDTI; Joaquín Estefanía, director of the UAM/EL PAÍS Journalism School, and Jorge Rivera, director of Cinco Días.

The Cinco Dias Award for the Most Innovative Business Initiative in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility went to the project TV Entrepreneurs, sponsored by the Banesto Fundación Sociedad y Tecnología. The project is an internet TV channel which serves as a forum for entrepreneurs and small businesses. The jury praised "the quality of an imaginative an innovative project, its commitment to helping small business, and the very personal approach it brings to the fostering of a spirit of work, effort, perseverance and personal achievement  among entrepreneurs with an aim to building  a successful future society."

Technology company Indra won the Cinco Dias Award for the Most Innovative Business Initiative in the field of New Technologies. The award-winning initiative was a simulator for training the emergency and security forces. The jury lauded the "pioneering nature of the initiative which applies new technologies to social needs, and whch will bring about a very real improvement in safety for security personnel".

The Cinco Dias Award for the Most Innovative Business Initiative at a University Level was given to the company  Alquimia Soluciones Ambientales, for its Research and Development Centre for Environmental Recovery (Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo para la Recuperación Ambiental - Cidra). The jury paid tribute to the "commitment to the sustainable use of resources, the efforts aimed at bringing innovation to environmental issues and the constructive understanding of the collaboration between universities and business."

Alquimina, set up in 2005, is the first spin-off company to emerge from the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha and is a joint venture formed by an association of teaching staff from the Castilla-La Mancha university and from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, in Madrid. Bringing together young entrepreneurs and business people from an environmental background, it aims to find solutions to issues related to water, residues and waste, sol and energy.

The awards ceremony is due to take place on December 15 at Madrid's Museo del Prado.