LEADERSHIP Brave thoughts – bold ideas
It was a holiday like no other for the five College boys who attended the Brave Thinkers 2021 conference in Palmerston North in July. “It was a really cool event, and we’d recommend it to anyone. We were treated like adults, we had free rein, and it was really, really cool,” Year 12 students Jasper Johnson, James Higginson, Oli Aikawa, and Jasper Moss and Year 13 student Alex Brett says.
They were among 27 students from around New Zealand who participated in the conference as part of New Zealand Business Week. It also provided the ideal opportunity for the boys to complete the residential component for their Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award. “When we got there, we were assigned to a team of five. We had to identify a problem in society and create a business idea to solve it,” Jasper Johnson says. “Some examples of what emerged were producing an app to help
teenagers quit vaping, finding a method of helping the wool industry develop an online platform for the promotion of small businesses, and developing a phone app to track your bus.” Each group had to present its business problem and then write a business plan on how it would be resolved. “It was really intense. We were working 12-hour days, but it was all fascinating. They were big days, from 7.30am until about 9.30pm,” Oli says.
Christ’s College Canterbury
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