Fresh off the victory at “Taiwan In My Eyes’ NSYSU students have done it once again and emerged victorious at the recently concluded Asia Pacific Youth Exchange Online And Global Innovation Idea Competition. Today, we reminisce about the competition with the first-place winner's Sam Lee and Leanne Shih, from the GHRM MBA program, Jasmine Chang and Keval Mehta from IBMBA, and the program co-ordinator Edward Tseng also from IBMBA.

For APYE Online And GSIIC, participants were requested to develop a business plan relating to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly relating to the issues created by Covid-19. The competition aims to empower the younger generation, raise awareness of timely issues and co-create youth-led and youth ideate development interventions. There were two parts of the competition: ideation and final pitching-our students got the first place in the final pitching stage of the competition.

Sam discovered about the competition through Facebook and decided to contact the rest of the members if they were interested in participating to which all the group members agreed. For Leanne, the opportunity to learn something new motivated her to participate, and Keval comments that since it was organized by the UN, the 'credibility,' as well as the bigger platform offered by the online mode of the competition, provided an impetus for participating. Sam also says that the certificate received through the competition will be valuable for her future. According to Jasmine, it was the opportunity to learn from different people that inspired her to compete.

With a catchy yet meaningful group name as "Greennovation," it’s no wonder our students caught the attention of the organizers. It was Leanne that came up with this quirky name. She shares:

"Since our program is related to some eco-friendly products and this competition asked us to give some innovative ideas, so I just combined these two words and came up with the name"

For the topic of their presentation, they had to focus on one or more SDGS’s out of 17. Greennovation members decided to concentrate on the timely and relevant SDGS of 'no poverty, 'decent work and economic growth,' 'industry, innovation and infrastructure,' 'sustainable cities and communities,' 'responsible consumption and production,' and 'climate action.' Our students provided meticulously researched solutions to the problem of excessive use of plastic shopping bags and improving self-reliance and localized production.

Throughout the entire run of the competition, the team members also forged some unforgettable memories. Sam reminisces that they would play some games after the presentation to relax and spend some time together, and she says, "it was a good time." For Leanne, it was the building of friendship and learning to work as a team that meant the most

But it wasn’t all fun and games as our students encountered some challenges as well. Keval mentions that some of the other teams were already established and were already running social businesses and were much stronger than them. Greennovation members were in an ideation stage while some were already in an implementation stage. However, by some stroke of luck, the organizers decided to split the competition into an 'ideation' and 'implementation' part, and in the later, our students persevered and came out on top. Leanne also mentions that since the judges didn't like their idea initially, they worked harder and made their idea more reasonable and workable.

When they found out that they made it to the top 8, the team members were very surprised. In fact, they didn’t even know when the top 8 were announced, but when the list was displayed, they were enthralled, surprised, and happy to see their group name. After that, they had to quickly do the final presentation for about 5 minutes. After days of brainstorming, researching, dealing with setbacks, and formulating their ideas, Greennovation bagged the first place. Leanne described the moment as 'amazing.' What is even more amazing about their victory is that they weren’t just competing with groups from Taiwan. In fact, they went head to head with 40 highly accomplished groups representing 17 countries from the Asia Pacific region.

The group members also shared that it wasn’t the monetary prize that mattered but the learning and enriching experience. For Keval, it was the ‘skill development’ and learning to do an online presentation that he valued the most. Edward, who provided information and necessary support to the team, comments that the process of seeing team Greenovation’s project develop from a nascent to a full-fledged plan was the most valuable experience. He also encouraged the group members to make a small prototype of their social business. From the competition, Jasmine also saw the positive side of humanity and was inspired as she shares:

"I learned that although life is hard and there are a lot of problems in the world, there are also a lot of people trying to make the world better. "

As of now, due to their busy schedules, the team members have decided to halt their project momentarily. In the future, they hope to bring their project to fruition and contribute to the SDGs.

From a small idea to dealing with setbacks and finally winning, NSYSU GHRM MBA & IBMBA students Sam, Leanne, Jasmine, and Keval have brought honor to the university. NSYSU GHRM MBA is immensely proud of their achievement and encourages all students to replicate their participative nature, hard work, and dedication.