Mosaic is a charitable organisation founded by HRH The Prince of Wales. Every year it hold a Business Enterprise Challenge, open to secondary schools nationwide, partnered with Apax Partners, an independent global partnership focused on investment.
The Challenge, involves students working with mentors on creating and marketing a new product. The Challenge provides the students with a realistic business scenario where students must learn about key business issues such as finance, sales, marketing and production and how they impact each other.
The Challenge, whilst being fun and exciting, provides an excellent way of introducing enterprise to young adults. In addition the Challenge fulfils the requirements of enterprise education within the National Curriculum and is fully in line with the ‘National Strategy for Enterprise Education’.
The business mentors who support students come from a range of businesses and backgrounds including PWC, Deloitte and Accenture and the likes of Credit Suisse, DLA Piper and Marks & Spencer.
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.
Each participating school can enter as many teams as it wishes and is provided with a free copy of the gaming software. The teams then have a two-week window in which to record their highest possible profit. Teams also submit an Ethical Business Strategy to demonstrate their understanding of responsible business practices.
Teams from the top 5 schools in each region (ours is the London region) are invited to attend the National Finals event, where they present their business idea in front of an audience of some 150 business and other leaders. The winners then go on to compete in the Grand Final with schools from all over the country.
The winner’s receive:
The Runners Up receive £2,000 prize money for their school, and 3rd placed receive £1,000 prize money for their school. All finalists receive goodie bags and all students receive certificates.
Brondesbury College won 3rd Place in 2011/2012. Well done to Musa Ahmad, Zaid Al-Saadi, Adam Khan, Tarek Muradi and Hamza King who all represented Brondesbury College brilliantly and were just pipped to the post.
Brondesbury College won 1st Place in 2010/2011!! This year saw over 250 teams competing involving some 1500 students from across the country, supported by over 100 Mosaic mentors. As well as cash prizes for the top three teams, the winning team had a private flight on the London Eye with ‘Secret Millionaire’ Mo Chaudry, pitched their business proposal to ‘Dragon’s Den’ star James Caan and even had tea with Mrs Cameron at 10 Downing Street!