I recently had the honour of accompanying a group of 16 Year 9 students to the Big Ideas Challenge at Haileybury’s City campus – a fast-paced and hands-on interschool entrepreneurial competition orchestrated by Future Anything. During this dynamic one-day event, our students had the opportunity to learn from some of Australia’s most inspiring changemakers, as well as explicitly develop their enterprising thinking and human-centred design skills.

Grounded in the framework of the Entrepreneur’s Odyssey, the Big Ideas Challenge encourages young minds to embark on a journey of self-discovery, using entrepreneurship as a vehicle to empower students with the knowledge, skills, support, and partnerships to develop innovative ideas that actively address real-world issues.

At the heart of the Big Ideas Challenge, students unite in small collaborative groups to identify a complex problem to address on a local level and then innovatively develop a solution. The competition culminates in each group pitching their solution to the panel of judges and the wider audience.

The Big Ideas Challenge has been thoughtfully designed to instil six pivotal Enterprise Skills that play a vital role in fostering an enterprising mindset and nurturing entrepreneurial thinking: Problem-Solving, Communication, Adaptive Mindset, Creativity and Innovation, Project Management and Critical Thinking. These six enterprise skills, often referred to as 21st-century learning skills or learning dispositions, are integral to preparing students to be agile learners in an evolving global economy. Future Anything’s team refer to these skills as 'superpowers' – skills essential for future-proofing students as well as developing their confidence and resilience.

By participating in the Big Ideas Challenge, students are gifted the valuable opportunity to practice and refine their problem-solving skills, navigate working collaboratively in diverse teams, and learn to effectively communicate with a common goal. In doing so, they further develop the essential human-centred skills needed for the broader world beyond our school gates.

Ten schools and over 150 students participated in this year’s Big Ideas Challenge, and I’m thrilled to announce that two of our students, Genevieve and Marianne, emerged victorious, winning the entire competition.

Dr Natalie Bunn,
Director of Learning and Innovation