Young Entrepreneurs
Lounging on a lush, red sofa in the spacious quarters of a Wynn Macau suite two weekends ago, I read through a pile of business plan submissions for HSBC's Young Entrepreneurs Award (This year's competition, open to university students throughout the region, attracted 300+ submissions from Hong Kong's university students alone). It was an inspiring location to be reading ideas for new businesses, because I'm an admirer of casino developer Steve Wynn's entrepreneurial vision. Regardless of what one might think about the morality of the gaming industry, Wynn has played a large role in transforming the image of Las Vegas, from vice city to playground to the mass affluent. Wynn's properties, from Mirage to Bellagio and now Wynn, has pretty much been about evolving American gaming (casinos across the Atlantic have a much more glam history) into a luxury leisure pursuit. It was a reminder that being a successful entrepreneur is not always about coming up with something totally new; it's more about having a vision and the tenacity to see it through.
It's always lots of fun to hear about other people's business ideas, especially when it's being told with boundless enthusiasm. Of the 33 submissions I read through, they ran the spectrum of silly to eyebrow-raising. The judging process is all rather subjective. And I would be the first to tell anyone whose submission did not get through the 10-member advisory committee's screening, which would be more than 250 teams, that a rejection is no true indication of whether the business idea will eventually succeed or fail. There are many great business ideas that will never see the light of day. As there are many not-so-great-on-paper business ideas that eventually succeed over time because of the entrepreneur's persistance.
When the committee met to decide which 50 ideas would make it to the next round of judging, we had interesting discussions about whether an idea would work or not and whether an idea was innovative or not. Interesting in the sense that it revealed more about each committee member's own individual background and biases. For the teams, it's a bit luck-of-the-draw. We were randomly assigned our lot of submissions. Being in the travel industry, I found my interest piquing whenever I came across a travel-related idea, which also meant I might have been a bit harsher on the travel ideas than ideas in other sectors where I have less first-hand knowledge and experience.
Coincidentally, as I was writing this post, the judges' feedback for the 2007 Oxford University 21st Century Challenge Competition, to which two friends and I had submitted a plan, landed in my email inbox. We didn't make it to the final rounds (3 finalists were selected for our particular track and in the end Saïd Business School alumnus David Maren's Email Emblems team was the winner of the Tomorrow's Wealth track with their idea to support charitable causes through emails people send.), but I found the judges comments and suggestions very encouraging and helpful.
I wish each of the 300+ teams that made a submission to HSBC's Young Entrepreneurs Award could have the opportunity to have a 15-minute discussion with the advisory committee, because it's really through bouncing ideas off as many people as possible and getting as many differing viewpoints as possible that helps to polish and refine ideas to the point where they start to sparkle with life. Just by putting idea to paper, though, these teams have already taken the first step towards entrepreneurship. The rest is about faith, passion and perseverance.
It's always lots of fun to hear about other people's business ideas, especially when it's being told with boundless enthusiasm. Of the 33 submissions I read through, they ran the spectrum of silly to eyebrow-raising. The judging process is all rather subjective. And I would be the first to tell anyone whose submission did not get through the 10-member advisory committee's screening, which would be more than 250 teams, that a rejection is no true indication of whether the business idea will eventually succeed or fail. There are many great business ideas that will never see the light of day. As there are many not-so-great-on-paper business ideas that eventually succeed over time because of the entrepreneur's persistance.
When the committee met to decide which 50 ideas would make it to the next round of judging, we had interesting discussions about whether an idea would work or not and whether an idea was innovative or not. Interesting in the sense that it revealed more about each committee member's own individual background and biases. For the teams, it's a bit luck-of-the-draw. We were randomly assigned our lot of submissions. Being in the travel industry, I found my interest piquing whenever I came across a travel-related idea, which also meant I might have been a bit harsher on the travel ideas than ideas in other sectors where I have less first-hand knowledge and experience.
Coincidentally, as I was writing this post, the judges' feedback for the 2007 Oxford University 21st Century Challenge Competition, to which two friends and I had submitted a plan, landed in my email inbox. We didn't make it to the final rounds (3 finalists were selected for our particular track and in the end Saïd Business School alumnus David Maren's Email Emblems team was the winner of the Tomorrow's Wealth track with their idea to support charitable causes through emails people send.), but I found the judges comments and suggestions very encouraging and helpful.
I wish each of the 300+ teams that made a submission to HSBC's Young Entrepreneurs Award could have the opportunity to have a 15-minute discussion with the advisory committee, because it's really through bouncing ideas off as many people as possible and getting as many differing viewpoints as possible that helps to polish and refine ideas to the point where they start to sparkle with life. Just by putting idea to paper, though, these teams have already taken the first step towards entrepreneurship. The rest is about faith, passion and perseverance.
Labels: entrepreneurship
posted by 10000miles at 18:29
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