Have you ever fancied yourself pitching your ideas to the business moguls over at Dragon’s Den? Year 9 at Cheltenham College did not have to imagine recently, as we sent our very own Will Doherty to officiate, mentor and judge the students at the Young Entrepreneur’s event on 19 October.
The competition is run by gfutures, who aim to build bridges between the worlds of education and business, and GCHQ, Cheltenham’s very own purveyors of pudding-centric architecture. As ever, the great minds of the future were tasked with conceptualising, marketing and financing an innovation which will assist the busy business person in the modern digital world. The students were then required to prepare a complete pitch to the nominal ‘Dragons’ (myself included), and all before lunchtime!
Ideas brought to life
After copious refreshment in the school cafeteria, we were ready to receive the pitches, which brought to life the various concepts which had been created over the course of the day. The quality of the ideas was of such a high standard that it was difficult to choose an overall winner, but the top presentation was awarded top marks across the board for the various aspects of the concept, the target markets, the depth of thought as to how to finance the project, and for the quality in the delivery of their pitch.
I cannot go into too much detail about the project (but suffice to say, it is an idea that some of the tech giants should be investigating in order to improve technological integration in educational contexts), but the winning team will go on to the regional final at GCHQ next year.
Can the students of Cheltenham College go on to win the whole competition? As the winners of last year’s competition, I would suggest that the omens are good! Maybe the presence of the trophy in the auditorium will have spurred our winners on to go and try and retain the title this coming year.
