Fintrade Academy’s partner school, the Classical College of Kuopio, held a 24-hour Entrepreneurship Camp between Friday, Jan 20th and Saturday, Jan 21st. During the camp, students enrolled in the Entrepreneurship course would form groups, engage in team building activities and develop business ideas and concepts of their own. The business ideas would be judged by a panel representing different businesses and organisations, including Lauri Sulanto attending on behalf of Fintrade Academy.

This year, the groups were given instructions to think of their business ideas from a China perspective: if the concept could be utilised in China directly, and whether product or service could be successful there. To set the stage, the course participants had been familiarising themselves with Fintrade Academy Doing Business in China already beforehand. In addition, Mr. Sulanto gave a short presentation about some of the mega trends and things to note about China and Hong Kong.

After for about 23 hours of camp, the students were ready to pitch their ideas to the panel. A handful of great presentations followed: the students expressed great capability in English, conceptualisation, presenting and team work. Moreover, the business ideas were excellent, ranging from Finnish design concepts to travel promotion and virtual reality, riding on the key mega trends of current. The whole panel was delighted to see such bright minded young people succeed in such a demanding task.

Finally,  a winner emerged from almost an equal group of teams. The winning team was awarded with Fintrade-Mercer Group founder Jari Vepsäläinen’s book, Naimisissa Kiinan Kanssa to facilitate further interest in entrepreneurship and business in China and Asia-Pacific. With this kind of talent and direction for the future, we expect many capable China businessmen to emerge from Vepsäläinen’s hometown of Kuopio.

The winning team receives their awards at the 24h Entrepreneurship Camp in the Classical College of Kuopio, Finland