Sikorsky Innovations launched its third Entrepreneurial Challenge on Wednesday at Heli-Expo ’13. The competition is designed to identify and accelerate growth for companies in the rotorcraft segment with revenues under $5 million, including newly formed and pre-revenue entities.

“This competition is targeted not only to small companies that can advance the development of helicopter technologies, but also to businesses that can yield transformational process innovations, and to ventures that can utilize vertical flight in new markets,” said Laurence Vigeant-Langlois, director of business development for Sikorsky Innovations, the technology development offshoot of Sikorsky Aircraft.

In addition to developing future aircraft concepts and enhancing existing platforms, Sikorsky has expanded the competition to include entities wishing to collaborate on the creation of new technologies. Challenge questions aimed at identifying the toughest issues currently facing the vertical flight community are now posted on the Sikorsky website.