Friday the 18th November brought together a group of entrepreneurial high school students as finalists in the University of New England Business School Innovation Challenge.
70 entries from high school students across the region were submitted to UNE Business School, where the top 20 ideas were chosen to turn their idea into a 3 minute pitch.
The UNE Business School worked with the finalists in the lead up to the event, developing ideas as well as coaching on pitching techniques.
More than 100 students from schools across New England, North West, and North Coast visited UNE for the Innovation Challenge. Local high schools included Armidale High, Duval, TAS, and Guyra Central School; as well as visitors from further afield such as Bishop Druitt College, St John Paul College and Orara High in Coffs Harbour.
UNE Business School was also pleased to host some younger friends, welcoming students from Kentucky Primary School for the day.
We were very pleased to have a Welcome to Country from Toni Widders, a local Anaiwan woman. School captains from Armidale High School helped open the event alongside Professor Alison Sheridan.
We heard from Skye Blackburn of the Edible Bug Shop, who beamed in from UNE FutureCampus in Parramatta, as well as Daniel Emery and Tom Croft from The Welder’s Dog, and Matt Pine of Austockphoto, who engaged our young audience with some great stories and observations about start-ups and business in regional areas.
Dave Couri, who has been working with UNE Business School on this event for the past few months, was a star MC on the day, as well as having put a lot of time into outreach with the finalists in preparation for the pitching competition.
Finalists made their 3 minute pitch to an audience of their peers as well as to a panel of judges: Daniel Emery & Tom Croft from The Welder’s Dog, Head of School for UNE Business School Professor Alison Sheridan, and Ms Myee Gregory from Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand.
There was a broad range of ideas – from social enterprise to clothes peg holders to voice-activated coffee machines, the finalists brought some great creativity, spoke well and actively engaged with the event all day, which was awesome to witness!
Dr Lou Conway put forward a pitch of her own, explaining the role the SMART Region Incubator will play in the community going forward. Myee Gregory delivered a great presentation on ‘Pitching Your Personal Brand’ to our audience right before the prizes were announced:
The $1000 first prize, sponsored by Chartered Accountants, was awarded to Ciara from St John Paul College, who pitched social enterprise “Pay it Forward” as an app to facilitate local business participation.
2nd place going to Kayla & Lilly from Guyra Central School, with their cloud-based medical triage app “Triage+”, and 3rd place was awarded to Kyanna from Duval High School, who did an awesome job pitching her cloud-based student organiser.
Professor Alison Sheridan as the Head of the UNE Business School said she was delighted to chair the judging panel. ‘The talent amongst young people for innovative ideas to change the way we do business in our region is exciting’.
UNE Business School is very thankful to a few key people for their help – namely John Schuman for his technical expertise, the wonderful Rachel Cameron for her endless help with some very key logistics, to Sharon, Sophia and Amanda for jumping in to help with no advance warning from us, the truly awesome Dr Kirsti Abbott from School of Science & Technology for welcoming our visitors in her wonderfully warm way, the lovely Fi Murray from Marketing & Public Affairs for being such a fantastic tour guide, Anna Boston in Marketing & Public Affairs for her endless patience with our requests, and Rob Field and Bobby Jiang at FutureCampus for their help in set-up.
The Innovation Challenge is a core activity of the UNE Business School’s initiative to connect young entrepreneurs to the business community. In conjunction with UNE’s recently announced SMART Region Incubator, action like this seeks to engage imaginations and enthusiasm for innovation and start-ups in regional Australia.
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