College students brainstorm with businesses at Venture Vortex

Over 100 students from Abingdon and Witney College’s Business, Accounting, and Events and Tourism courses took part in an exciting Dragons’ Den-style event on Friday 21^st September at Jurys Inn Hotel in Oxford.

Venture Vortex is the annual event held for Level 2 and 3 students at the beginning of term, aimed at developing their business and entrepreneurial acumen and providing an opportunity to work with and get feedback from industry experts.

With the promise of top prizes for the winners, the remit was to come up with an innovative new business idea, as each team was paired with an expert to assist with research, budgeting, branding and marketing, before the all-important selling pitch to earn ‘money tokens’ – whoever had the most tokens won a prize!

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In the afternoon session, the teams developed the ideas even further, eventually culminating in a five minute presentation to the Venture Vortex Specialists. The winning team was Universal with their product the “Universal Tracker” – a portable tracker that is placed in suitcases to help solve the evolving problem of missing baggage. The tracker could also be used in other portable carriers and came with an element of security to help with left luggage.

Universal – made up of team members Megan, James, Lois, Tenesha, Jack, Ben and Niamh – won the first round collecting over £880 from the Venture Specialists and presented their idea very well, ultimately winning the Venture Specialist vote.

Angela Hayles, head of The Oxfordshire Business and Enterprise School at the College, said:

“After another successful edition of Venture Vortex, it’s been fantastic to see how well all the students responded to the business brief and really engaged with their projects, displaying skills in teamwork, presenting and communication. Some of the ideas the students came up with really blew our industry experts away.

Most importantly, the knowledge gained from this experience will be invaluable for their career development, as these are the types of scenarios they’ll be working in once they enter employment.”

(September 2018)