Prince’s Trust Enterprise Challenge

Can you mentor students aged 11-16 years old to increase their confidence, raise their aspirations and inspire them? The approximate commitment is 6 hours (not including travel time, advance preparation and training).

Aims

The Enterprise Challenge is a competition designed to develop young people’s understanding of business concepts and how they can apply them. Interaction with mentors helps build the students’ confidence, employability and raise their aspirations.

What is the Enterprise Challenge?

The Enterprise Challenge is an inter-school competition which encourages a spirit of entrepreneurship, with young people working in teams with the support of mentors to compete to become Enterprise Challenge Grand Champions.

]The Enterprise Challenge is open to secondary school students aged 11-16 and takes place between January and May. Students learn about establishing and running a business through an online business game, Pop-Up.

The five best performing schools in each region will be invited to take part in a regional finals event. Teams develop their own idea for a social enterprise and pitch it to a panel of judges at the event.

The winners of each regional final are then invited to the grand finals in London, where they’ll have the opportunity to pitch their business idea in front of an audience of business experts.

All teams who take part in the National Finals will win a goody bag and a fun afternoon activity out in London. The winning team will receive;

A winner’s trophy and shield with the school name engraved
Individual winner’s medal
£500 investment into their social enterprise idea
A range of other surprises revealed on the day!

In the history of the competition, winning teams have enjoyed private trips on the London Eye, tea at Harrods, tea with the Prime Minister’s wife at 10 Downing Street, a trip to ITV News to meet Natasha Kaplinksy, a unique tour of Clarence House and a tour of HM Treasury.

The Game

Pop-Up is a business simulation game that puts young people in charge of starting and running a brand-new pop-up business. The game is based around making strategic business decisions. From choosing what to sell and for how much, to where to set-up shop and how to attract customers, teams make decisions and then fine-tune their businesses based on business data received during the trade phase. The goal is to create a thriving pop-up business within eight weeks of simulated trading that balances building hype, making a profit and taking ethical business decisions.

Game-based learning is a highly effective learning intervention which allows young people to get hands-on with learning content whilst engaged in an act of gaming. Pop-Up is based on a game loop that creates a learnby-doing experience, putting the emphasis on observation and reflection.

The Mentors

The business mentors who support students come from a range of businesses and backgrounds. Companies to have provided mentors in the past include PWC, Deloitte and Accenture and the likes of Credit Suisse, DLA Piper and Marks and Spencer.

Our mentors work with school teams to cover each element of the competition, preparing them for the competition and explaining how the issues covered by the game are of crucial importance to their own businesses so as to bring the game to life with real-world examples.

Enterprise Challenge 2019

The Prince’s Trust Enterprise Challenge launched on the 7th January 2019. Team A.I Class from Dixons Unity in Yorkshire were crowned the Enterprise Challenge National Champions 2019 at the annual Grand Finals held in Hogan Lovells LLP on the 2nd May 2019.