Background
National Conference on Graduate Entrepreneurship
Seminars and Workshops on Entrepreneurship
IDEATORS - an Entrepreneurship Competition
3-Way Debate on Graduate Entrepreneurship
Enterprise Education Exhibition
Roundtable Discussion and Action Planning on Graduate Employability
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NEW 08 Proceedings and Outcomes
IDEATORS – An Entrepreneurship Competition
‘IDEATORS’ is an innovative, reality TV based Entrepreneurship competition that focuses on identifying and rewarding entrepreneurship at the undergraduate level and was organised for the first time in Sri Lanka. ETV, a popular television station in Sri Lanka was selected as the production partner for IDEATORS. The competition was conceptualised by the British Council Sri Lanka. ‘IDEATORS’ is currently showing on ETV on Saturdays from 1900 to 2000 and repeated on Tuesdays from 2200 to 2300.
Creating awareness amongst university community and general public about Graduate Entrepreneurship
Providing opportunities for Sri Lanka and UK undergraduates to experience real life business scenarios
Providing opportunities for Sri Lankan and UK undergraduates to express their innovative ideas, entrepreneurial skills and creative talents
Providing opportunities for Sri Lankan and UK undergraduates to interact, share ideas and knowledge and develop networks
Five large-scale enterprises were selected as the strategic and competition partners. Each company was requested to develop an enterprise task preferably related to an actual business issue. A task guideline was provided to each company and the task was developed in consultation with ETV in order to make sure that the task would be appealing to a television audience.
Company Task
Laugfs Holdings Develop an innovative plan to improve sales of domestic gas cylinders by using one of their competitive advantages
Dankotuwa Porcelain Develop an innovative plan to improve sales of their dining ware in the local market by changing the dining habits of the new emerging middle class
ODEL Recommend the next best business area that ODEL should venture into keeping their brand identity
DSI Design a new shoe for the age group of 9-12 years
Unilever Sri Lanka Design a marketing strategy to introduce a new anti-aging beauty product
Each company was then allocated a pair of teams and three days to carryout the competition.
The top management of the company will brief the two teams on the task
Each team will then develop their action plan
Teams then execute their plan such as carrying out a brief customer survey, brainstorming, design/develop prototypes and preparation for presentation etc.
Each team presents their innovative solution to the top management of the company
The management evaluates the two teams based on their entrepreneurial skills (See Appendix E) and adjudge the winning team
Dedicated camera crews follow each team from the start to record how teams planned, prepared and presented their solution. Each competition will then be edited and televised as an episode
Once all five competitions are completed out of the five winning teams, the best team will be selected based on SMS (Short Message Service) and telephone voting by the viewers
Each student who took part in the competition was given a certificate from the British Council
All winning teams will be given a free workshop by the courtesy of the Professional Training Centre (PTC) of British Council
Each winning team will be given an internship by the respective company for period decided by the company
The best team winning at the grand finale will be given a 5 night stay at the Hotel Sigiriya with out door activities and hands on training on some of the hospitality services such as room service, cookery, serving etc.
Sri Lankan undergraduates who took part in IDEATORS are generally innovative but lack effective presentation skills
They are more inclined towards theoretical interpretation than using theory to support their solution in a practical manner
They generally do not think out-of-the-box when given a challenge and need constant pushing towards thinking innovatively
Certain social, economic and political elements have been embedded in their minds thus possibly blocking their creative imagination. For example when designing a poster they showed clear stereotypic designs
40%-50% of the Sri Lankan competitors are not proficient in English language especially in terms of presentation.
75% of the Sri Lankan competitors did not manage their time effectively
There were very little arguments amongst the Sri Lankan team members
UK competitors have more exposure in all aspects than the Sri Lankan competitors
Compared to the UK competitors, internet usage by the Sri Lankan competitors was scarce
All students who took part in the competition were highly interested in the programme and were pleased that they were given the opportunity
Organise a series of entrepreneurial skills development workshops in Sri Lankan universities
Organise ‘IDEATORS 2’ in the year 2009 with more participation of students by both countries
Organise opportunities for Sri Lankan undergraduates to experience through exposure to new global developments in enterprise, innovation, technology, culture etc. For example Education UK annual exhibitions can be used to showcase innovative creations of the UK universities by having different themes for each year such as ICT, Robotics and creative industries etc
