This past Saturday, September 5th, the biggest entrepreneurship competition aimed at regular and technical high school students from all over Brazil kicked off. This is the Inova Jovem program, organized by Unicamp Innovation Agency, which this year is running completely online as a preventive measure against COVID-19.
In total, 136 teams, made up of a minimum of three and a maximum of five people each, from nine Brazilian states plus the Federal District were registered for the edition free of charge. In total, 519 students had the opportunity to participate in an exclusive Workshop, with space for questions and answers. This made it possible to begin understanding concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship, such as what the Business Model Canvas (BMC) is and what it is for, the easy-to-read template for team discussion about a business model.
Among the training carried out, one of the highlights of the program was the introduction of the 2.5 business concept, presented by the entrepreneur and founder of 2.5 Ventures, Wilson Campanholi Jr. Business 2.5 is understood to be those enterprises that are between the business classifications of the 2nd sector (private) and 3rd sector (non-profit organizations), that is, they are businesses that aim to make a profit to sustain themselves, but with the purpose of solving any socio-environmental or humanitarian problem.
“Business 2.5 has the explicit purpose of generating positive socio-environmental impact while also generating financial results so that the business can sustain itself without depending on philanthropy. Perhaps, if we could summarize business 2.5 in one word, it would be: Purpose.”, explains Campanholi Jr. about the different types of businesses with examples that students can try to develop.
As the competition foresees that the teams' business ideas are aligned with some of the Sustainable Development Goals foreseen by the United Nations, professor Newton Frateschi, executive director of Inova Unicamp, explained that “in addition to basic concepts of innovation and modeling of business, it was necessary for students to also know positive examples of business 2.5, from which they could be inspired and try to propose a sustainable development business with social impact and still independent of philanthropy”.
Next steps for Inova Jovem 2020
The Inova Jovem Workshop was the first mandatory activity for registered teams, with at least two members having to participate in the live activity to continue in the competition. Now, after the training, students get their hands dirty with distance business mentoring that will help them transform their ideas into viable business models that can be self-sustaining.
This practical nature is seen as a differentiator of the competition, following the new active teaching methodologies, as explained by professor Luís Gustavo Megiolaro, deputy director of the Poliedro System school units, who was at the opening of the workshop. “The new high school works with active methodologies with the intention of encouraging students to develop beyond the classroom content. In other words, now the student is the protagonist and participates actively and autonomously in the learning process when he is encouraged to absorb the content through projects, activities and challenges such as Inova Jovem.”, supports the teacher who evaluates the competition as relevant complementary content in the students’ educational curriculum.
Among the practical activities, check out the agenda of upcoming Inova Jovem 2020 activities below:
- September 19 (Saturday): students will receive virtual business mentoring
- September 28th (Monday): last day to deliver canvases
- October 03rd (Saturday): All participants will receive pitch training
- October 14th (Thursday): announcement of the finalist teams based on the canvas evaluation
- Week of October 19th: individual pitch training for finalist team
- October 23rd (Friday): Inova Jovem 2020 final webinar
About Inova Jovem
The Inova Jovem program is a competition created by the Unicamp Innovation Agency in 2014 with the aim of presenting entrepreneurship as a career option for young people in high school. The competition, which has already trained more than 2100 students by 2019, this year received registrations from 519 students divided into 136 teams from 59 schools spread across nine Brazilian states plus the Federal District.
Inova Jovem 2020 Sponsors: FM2S, Matera, Polyhedron Education
Inova Jovem 2020 Supporters: Campinas Tech, C6 Bank, Expo Ensino, Fundação Educar Dpaschoal, Secretariat of Economic, Social and Tourism Development of Campinas, 2.5 Ventures
Matter original published on the Unicamp Innovation Agency website.
