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Jos Coolen reports on Boffa Miskell's involvement with Entrepreneurs In Action.
Last weekend a team of Wellington-based consultants — Emma McRae, Maria Bergvall, Carolyn McLean, Jeremy Garrett-Walker, Jessica Smith, and I — took part in the Entrepreneurs in Action (EIA) weekend as mentor of a team of six high school students.
EIA is a competition that is organised by the Young Enterprise Trust, an organisation that helps students that have signed up to one of the programmes to unleash their entrepreneurial spirit. Over the weekend 10 teams, 81 students (17/18 years old), from all around New Zealand, came together at Massey University in Wellington to participate in two challenges, mentored by a range of companies, including Boffa Miskell, BP, Xero and the Centres of Asia-Pacific Excellence in New Zealand.
The task for us Boffa Miskell mentors was to support and motivate the team by giving them a creative environment to work in and challenge them to stand out by thinking outside the box.
For the Friday challenge, the team had to come up with a business case for a product or strategy that would minimise the amount of waste in the horticulture industry.
On Saturday the team spent the day in and around the Wellington office, where they had to come up with a market entry strategy for introducing a new communications tool into Latin America. It was up to the team to find out which country would be the best market to enter for this imaginary company, and what strategy would be the most viable.
The weekend ended on Sunday afternoon at Massey University when all teams presented their pitches and the winners were chosen.
As mentors, we were very impressed with the student’s passion and focus. The students, who all have set up their own personal business as part of the Young Enterprise Scheme, had never met each other before the weekend but from the start they showed an impressive and seamless teamwork. Even though the team did not go home with the overall victory, it was a great experience and both the students and the mentors went home inspired and satisfied with what was achieved in just a bit more than two days.
We hope that the students keep up the diligence and outstanding work ethic that they’ve shown over the weekend and are keen to follow them during their first steps as they embark on a promising career.
Grace Gordon, one of the students of Team Boffa Miskell, will present about her personal business, Wero Mai, a board game that will help in learning Te Reo, to the Wellington office later this month.