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 1 hour per week, for 6 weeks (not including travel time and advance preparation).

Objectives

The Mosaic Enterprise Challenge is a fully-funded competition designed to increase young people’s understanding of business concepts and how they can apply them. Interaction with mentors helps build the students’ confidence, employability and self-efficacy.

What is the Enterprise Challenge?

The Enterprise Challenge is an annual, national competition during which secondary school students aged 11-16 learn about establishing and running a business through a business simulation game. The five best performing teams in each region compete to receive a coveted place in the prestigious National Final, pitching their developed business concepts to an expert panel of judges.

The competition is unique in that students benefit from being mentored by experienced business professionals who pass on their knowledge and skills about various aspects of business.

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 Runners Up receive £2,000 in prize money for their school, while the third placed team are awarded £1,000. All finalists receive goodie bags and all students receive certificates.

The winning team will also be supported by Mosaic to develop and launch their business idea, with prize money of £500 and the winning school receiving an additional £2,000.

The game

The game puts the learner into a realistic business scenario where they develop and market a new product, providing an engaging, challenging and fun opportunity for students whilst demonstrating how key business issues such as finance, sales, marketing and production are affected by each other.

Specifically designed for use by teenagers for in-class use, the game fulfills the requirements of enterprise education within the National Curriculum and is fully in line with the ‘National Strategy for Enterprise Education’ to provide an excellent way of introducing enterprise to young adults and teens.

The mentors

The business mentors who support students come from a range of businesses and backgrounds and are highly valued by Mosaic. 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 have agreed to support the Challenge this year.

In addition to unrestricted use of the game software by schools for a full year, as well as for the duration of the competition, schools benefit from live mentoring to support key aspects of the game from Mosaic’s inspirational business mentors.

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.

The competition

Each participating school can enter as many teams as it wishes and is provided with a free copy of the gaming software. In the run-up to the Challenge proper, mentors work with school teams to develop pupils’ understanding of the issues covered by the game. The teams then have a two-week window in which to record their highest possible profit.

Each team also has to submit an Ethical Business Strategy to demonstrate their understanding of responsible business practices. At the end of the heats, teams from the top five schools are invited to attend the prestigious national finals event in central London, where they will compete to become the winners in front of an audience of some 150 business and other leaders.

Enterprise Challenge 2019

The Prince’s Trust Enterprise Challenge launches on the 7th January 2019! More updates to follow once the competition kicks off.

Enterprise Challenge 2018

The winning teams from each region all competed at the Mosaic Grand Finals, held on the 8th May at the offices of Hogan Lovells LLP in London. This was a fantastic day in which the finalist teams presented their pitches to a panel of expert judges. The final was compered by TV presenter and broadcaster Nomia Iqbal, who as part of the event hosted a fascinating Q&A session with special guest Jamal Edwards MBE – entrepreneur founder of SB.TV and a Prince’s Trust ambassador.

At the end of the day Team Ed-Wise from Eden Girls Waltham Forest, London were chosen as winners. Their business idea was to disrupt the current substitute teacher market by creating a new online market-place for schools to find quality supply teachers directly, disregarding the use of agencies and the high rates of commission associated with them.

Read about Eden Girls Waltham Forest’s victory and full details about the day.

The 2018 winning teams from each region were:

Mosaic South East Regional Winners – Lynch Hill Enterprise Academy
Mosaic Scotland Regional Winners – Shawlands Academy
Mosaic London Regional Winners – Eden Girls, Waltham Forest
Mosaic North West Regional Winners – Ladybridge High School
Mosaic Yorkshire Regional Winners – Dixons Kings Academy
Mosaic West Midlands Regional Winners – Grace Academy, Coventry