Sustainability Competition 2016 Review
This April we held the newly introduced Sustainability Case Competition for the first time!
The competition aimed to provide students with the opportunity to gain insights in sustainable business, making strategic directions that could impact the future of the case organisation, its workforce, customers and the planet. With the competition running alongside the Business School’s Sustainability Week, which saw a range of guest speakers present on various sustainable business issues.
Teams were verbally briefed on issues faced by Pure Advantage on the Monday with three days to research and develop a written proposal. Pure Advantage is a small business think tank and media outlet that aims to lead New Zealand’s green growth. Their website has top quality articles both focusing on academic green literature, new business thinking and positive local stories highlighting innovative green businesses.
The proposals had a range of ideas and it was a challenge to narrow it down to the three finalists presented on Friday evening. The presentations were a panel of judges consisting of Phillip Mills (Pure Advantage and Les Mils), Simon Millar (Pure Advantage) and Brendon Potter (University of Auckland). Following the presentations, we joined Phillip’s key note address at the final Sustainability Week function after which we announced the awards.
The caliber of proposals and presentations was extremely high but after careful consideration we selected the following teams for first, second and third place:
In first place we had team Lets Get Sustainable, with team members Nadya Fauzia, Cecilia Fang and Gordon Kang.
In second place we had team Dynamic Emanation with team members Kobe Huang, Emily Chen, Edson Han and Sayaka Kawamoto.
And third place was awarded to Team Ream, which consisted of members Renee Duncan, Miro Muriel Harre, Alex Matcalfe and Evie Gravatt.
Congratulations to all participants, again the caliber was extremely high. We look forward to running this competition in 2017!