Thursday 30th January saw the first Zenen school business challenge with 12 year 8’s from St James leading the way. Hosted by David Solomides, director of ZENEN Education Services and with involvement of University of Exeter, with Joe Pearce the Business Manager of the Innovation Centre and two of the successful undergraduate entrepreneurs; Ali Gillum (Macaw Designs) and Jon Mills (Mammal Swag), who currently juggle running their own successful businesses with studying. Ali and Jon adopted a team of 6 each, to coach the Year 8’s in utilising the Xing business game to understand a structured approach to the different elements of creating a business from scratch and the order in which this happens; also, to think for themselves and learn and build on each other’s ideas and suggestions. We were all very impressed with the enthusiasm and creativity the two teams displayed and the way that the participants gravitated towards their individual executive roles. The objective of the Challenge was to understand the components and building blocks that make a business function, how they are fused and interact, and how the individuals are capable of creating something collectively that they would struggle to achieve individually. Whilst previous participants usually approach […]
ZENEN Business Challenge On Wednesday 19th March Year 8 students from West Exe travelled to St James High School to take part in a ‘Zenen Business Challenge’ day, where they competed in teams against St James Year 8 students. Coached by undergraduate entrepreneurs from the University of Exeter Innovation Centre, the teams worked to create a sales and marketing campaign and to produce a business plan to justify why they should be awarded the £3000 start-up funding. At the end of the day they gave a team presentation to a judging panel of teachers and business people. The objective of the Challenge was to understand the components and building blocks that make a business function, how they are fused and interact, and how the individuals are capable of creating something collectively that they would struggle to achieve individually. The emotion and drive that the students displayed was infectious, with some very creative ideas, well expressed and enthusiastically delivered. There was clearly competition between the teams and each had their strengths, with St James Team 2 narrowly edging out West Exe Team 2 to win. Their prize? A guided tour of University of Exeter and the Innovation Centre, finishing with a […]
