BTEC National Business students take part in City Masterclass
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A group of lucky and talented BTEC National Business Studies students from Tower Hamlets College were selected to attend an inspirational “Dragon’s Den” event at one of the UK’s most prestigious universities, City University last term.
Students gained an invaluable experience which was similar to the popular TV series, Dragon’s Den. They were split up into groups made up of students from across London to work as a team. Their task was to come up with a business idea, and then to pitch it to the dragons. Groups came up with some promising ideas such as, a remote controlled vacuum cleaner and mp3 earpieces to name but a few.
This whole experience gave students the chance to put their knowledge gained from their academic studies into practice into the real business world. Ideas such as the use of marketing mix, pricing the products after taking into account all the costs incurred and then finally the development of the product, considering who their target customers are, which would all depend on the type of product idea each group had thought of.
At the end of this process, all the groups took part in a 15 minute presentation to the dragon’s, who were in fact workers from top financial institutions willing to give up their time to play the roles of dragons. All nine groups had to battle it out to win the investments from the Dragons.
The groups then received feedback from the experts on ways that they could improve their ideas and whether they thought their ideas would be a success or not.
Three groups were selected as winners, as the ideas were too good for the dragons to decide on just one. Shona Benfield, a Tower Hamlets Sixth Form College student, studying the BTEC National Diploma in Business was in one of the three groups which won the investments from the dragons. Their idea was a Micro Bluetooth Headset, which would have a variety of functions including the ability to listen to music. Each of the lucky group winners won high street shop vouchers.
This was an interesting, innovative process and truly reflects on the success of our talented students at Tower Hamlets College.
By Ashadur Rahman