Breaking into the world of entrepreneurship is tough. That’s why the Longo Centre for Entrepreneurship at Humber College wants to give students all the advantages they can.
“It’s for everyone who wants to explore the world of entrepreneurship,” says Lida Anwari, a placement advisor at Longo, who connects students with startups or organizations to complete work integrated learning as part of Experience Ventures. “We serve the Humber community including students, alumni, and community members at the earliest stage of entrepreneurship.”
With the Longo Centre for Entrepreneurship, Experience Ventures knew it had found a partner that cared about giving students access to the best opportunities. During Humber’s 2022 fall reading week, the Longo Centre for Entrepreneurship ran an Experience Ventures challenge, a one-week crash course in the creative problem solving the team at Longo CfE called an “Innovation Boot Camp.”
Creating an opportunity for students to further develop being creative in finding innovative solutions is what Experience Ventures is all about. Experience Ventures is powered by the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary and seeks to provide students with a chance to apply entrepreneurial thinking skills to real-world problems. Humber is one of 12 other Canadian post-secondary institutions in the Experience Ventures program that offers students an honorarium to help cultivate their skills.
Diversity and experience
More than 35 students from different programs and fields of study participated in a week of skill building workshops to stimulate new ways of thinking. Due to Humber’s wide reach and diversity of programming, students from programs not traditionally associated with these kinds of problem-solving hackathons participated, such as nursing students from Humber’s North Campus.
Over the course of this week, students were asked to apply the skills they learned in the workshops to solve a real-world problem proposed by a Toronto-based sustainability startup Inwit. Inwit offers a curated menu from some of Toronto’s best restaurants, delivered to workplaces in reusable, stainless steel containers.
Inwit’s challenge to the boot camp participants was to find out why companies cared about ordering sustainable takeout for their staff and events, and how the sustainability startup could better engage with their new customer segment. The 35 students attended two skill-building workshops a day and, between workshops, they joined a break-out room of four or five students each to come up with a pitch that would solve Inwit’s challenge.
Companies like Inwit benefit from participating in Experience Ventures by engaging with students with minimum impact on time and resources, while tapping into students’ different insights and perspectives.
“This boot camp was an amazing experience as it allowed me to work with talented students who come from a diverse set of backgrounds. It not only allowed me to challenge myself but also provided me with continuous learning opportunities. I was able to work on a real-world scenario using what I have learned in class, and I can’t wait for next year’s challenge!”
– Challenge participant Mohammad Hannad Ahsan
Cultivating a creative mindset
The goal of the boot camp was to have students not just tackle this problem, but to do so with a creative, entrepreneurial mindset.
“Experiences like this create value to students because it helps promote new ways of thinking,” Anwari said. “It allows students to form interdisciplinary teams and work together to research and find innovative ideas, as well as enhance students’ problem-solving and teamwork skills.”
At the end of the week, each group pitched a solution via video that was no longer than five minutes. Students were paid a stipend for their time, and the winning team was awarded a cash prize. The Longo CfE team was so impressed with the winning entry they gave them an extra swag bag prize!
Prizes and revolutionary new ways of thinking aren’t the only benefits. The connections students make with startups, and each other, can help to catapult them out of school and into the working world. In addition to challenges, Experience Ventures and the Longo Centre for Entrepreneurship provides students with entrepreneurial thinking placements with leading startups.
Ventures apply with a specific project they want students to work on, and Anwari and her team connect them with students across different disciplines. This opportunity appeals to students because they get paid for their work, it promotes career readiness, and allows them to network with startups and social ventures. At the conclusion of the placement, the startup is able to decide if they would like to hire the student afterward.
“The Experience Ventures’ experiential learning placement gave me valuable experiences. It gave me an opportunity to be a part of a promotional event for a business, something that I had never done before. I can confidently say that the WIL placement contributed positively to my public speaking and presentation skills and, overall, I felt that I was able to use and develop many of the skills that I have learned in various marketing courses at Humber College as well.”
– Eric Mcgill
From regular challenges dedicated to pushing students into new ways of thinking, to networking opportunities, to integrated learning placements, Experience Ventures works with the Longo Centre for Entrepreneurship at Humber to find new opportunities for students.