Young Entrepreneurs start virtual Willy Wonka business
Four teams of 16- and 17-year-olds are on the starting blocks to compete with each other to run the most profitable chocolate factory in a partnership between the University of Sussex’s School of Business Management and Economics (BMEc) and three Sussex schools.
The teams from Portslade Aldridge Community Academy, Sackville School in East Grinstead and Felpham Community College in Bognor met with staff from BMEc on Friday (16 January) to learn the basics of running a business without going into meltdown.
They were then taken to one of BMEc’s computer clusters in the Jubilee building to learn how to use the virtual chocolate factory software and start the game.
Mark Fisher, Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of Student Experience at BMEc, said: “We hope the pupils will get a taste of university life and we can eventually recruit some of them.”
Milo Hendriks, director of Netherlands-based Edumundo, which develops management simulations and business games and which designed the software being used in the contest, said: “Each team will manage their own small chocolate factory. All the teams will compete in the same market place. They will have to fight each other for market share and steal customers from each other.”
Hendriks said the teams will have to manage all aspects of the business. “They will have to purchase machinery and determine things like the price of the goods, the salaries of staff and the marketing budget,” he said.
One of the first tasks was to come up with names for the factories. The teams chose Beyond Chocolate, May Day Chocolate, Amour du Chocolat, and Chocolate Delight.
The competition will run online over the next four weeks, with the contestants working on different flaky scenarios each week.
The school students will then return to campus on 26 February for a plenary session, when each team will give a presentation about their factories.
The winners will be the most profitable factory – but other bench marks such as corporate image will also be looked at.
The competition is part of the University’s Widening Participation programme and all the contestants are from families where university education is unusual.