PwC Dragons’ Den Challenge!

Posted at 2:12 pm on 25th June, 2019

Over fifty of our year 10 business and product design students were chosen to participate in a ‘Dragons’ Den’ style activity with visitors from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Spinningfields Manchester visiting the school.

The morning began with an introduction about ‘Who are PwC’ and how they assist businesses to work in better ways. Which expanded into question and answers about ‘What it means to be an entrepreneur, how businesses take their products and services to market and how they make their money?’ Students were very attentive and quizzed our visitors about the world of business. 

Students were split into teams and worked together brainstorming an original business idea, whilst looking at how they would bring their idea to market and potentially scale up their idea to become a global product or service. Members of the PwC team assisted each team to overcome problems raised and build our students confidence; stretching their ideas inorder to achieve their fullest potential.

The event culminated in each team presenting their ideas, along with how it would work and how sustainable it would be, to the panel of PwC ‘Dragons’. Points were awarded throughout the process for demonstrating different business skills such as team building, communication skills, negotiating skills, time management, presentations skills/confidence building and idea generation.

Our students all performed well under testing ‘Dragons’ Den’ style questioning, presenting in front of four judges and their peers in under two minutes, with their chosen ideas, thought processes and solutions. Many students really impressed during this process but particular mention must go to Mya Dixon, Abigail Hughes, Olivia Houston and Katie Adamson for their excellent presentation skills.

Once all points awarded were totalled up all members of the two winning teams each were presented with a Trafford Centre voucher.

Mr Cant Business Studies teacher said, ‘Neil and his colleagues from PwC gave our year 10 Business and Product Design students a first class experience in how to come up with solutions to some business problems and then successfully pitch their ideas to a panel of judges.”

Leah Barlow commented, ‘The PwC experience was really good for us as it helped to develop our personal confidence and helped us to understand what business in the real world is actually like.’

Abigail Hughes said. ‘PwC taught us how to pitch a product that we had designed ourselves to a panel of judges. The staff from PwC were really friendly and encouraged us to be confident with our ideas. They engaged with us really well and were very enthusiastic.’

Neil Montgomery Senior Manager, Assurance PwC said, ‘That was great fun! The entire team were energised by the whole event and we were really impressed by your students engagement. PwC are proud to promote International Women’s Day and Women Unbound – Unleashing Female Entrepreneurual Potential among many other great international causes supporting our diversity and inclusion agenda’ -  

FGS thanks the team at PwC, Spinningfields Manchester for the time and expertise they have shared with our students specifically Neil Montgomery, Senior Manager, Assurance – Ceri Taylor, Senior Manager, Assurance – Ankur Gupta, Manager, Assurance – Elliot Pledger, Intern/Trainee, Assurance – April Chen, Associate, Assurance and Tori Damsell, Associate. We hope we are able to continue this alliance over the coming years.