unior Achievement of British Columbia hosted the first ever Innovation Jam, Feb. 20 at the Coast Coal Harbour Hotel in Downtown Vancouver.
Amongst 120 Grade 11 and 12 students from 20 schools across B.C., Quesnel’s Correlieu senior secondary school attended with a team of six students.
Students were tasked with thinking big about creating the innovative businesses of tomorrow.
This intense one-day event had the student teams working together to pitch new and innovative business ideas with a focus on environmental sustainability. After breakfast, students attended an environmental innovation workshop led by Joanna Buczkowska-McCumber, managing director at the ISIS Research Centre for Social Innovation and Sustainability at UBC’s Sauder School of Business.
Teams then prepared their presentations, were filmed and judged by a panel of experts, including several members of Business in Vancouver’s Forty Under 40.
“It was great fun, intense and tonnes of great networking,” Correlieu team member Daniel MacDougall said.
After lunch the semi-finalists were announced. All 20 team’s pitches were posted on YouTube where the public can ‘like’ their favourite business idea.
On Feb. 28, the team with the most ‘likes’ wins the JABC Innovation Jam People’s Choice Award.
The Correlieu team was guided through the experience by Correlieu career prep coordinator and business and info tech department head Martin Runge.
“Although not in the final four, all the kids had a great time, presented their product well (considering they only had about an hour to create it and come up with a presentation) and met many great students from all over the province,” Runge said.