Propose a great satnav idea and win a prize with ESA support to create your own business. Previous winners are now running companies with systems for athlete tracking and indoor navigation, and many are supported by ESA's Business Incubation Centres.

Launched this week at the European Navigation Conference in Rotterdam, the annual European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) recognises products, services and innovations designed to improve our daily lives with the help of satellite navigation.

ESA's Technology Transfer Programme (TTP) is again contributing the ESA Innovation Prize for the most promising satnav application that can be quickly developed into a profitable business.

Now a crucial 21st-century technology, satellite navigation is an increasingly attractive growth market. It is expected to grow by an annual average of 11%, reaching euro 244 billion by 2020.

In particular, start-ups and smaller companies stand to profit from this burgeoning field.

Our lives today are hard to imagine without satellite navigation - from conventional routing and location services to mobile apps for monitoring sporting activities.

Following ESA's tests of Galileo's signals in early 2013 and with four satellites already operational, another leap in the commercial use of satellite navigation can be expected.

"Europe's entrepreneurs, smaller companies and industry can now seize the opportunity to create value-added applications for the downstream satellite positioning and navigation market, where several technologies are converging to make 'ubiquitous positioning' a compelling reality," emphasises Matthias Petschke, director of the European Commission's satnav programmes.