After 3 action-packed weeks, our Toronto program has come to an end. The fifth edition of Toronto Business Academy saw more participants than ever! Moreover, our survey showed extreme satisfaction among our students!
Throughout the 3 weeks in Toronto, our students benefited from a collaborative learning experience. The well-engineered program with a range of different components made for an excellent learning experience for our students.
Table of Contents
Toronto Mindset
Toronto is one of the fastest-growing entrepreneurial hubs worldwide. This made it the perfect environment for our participants to embrace the mindset and experience the hustle vibe. Such a developed startup ecosystem, with so many great guest speakers who are willing to share their experience and show our students what it takes to be a part of their business community.
Practical Learning Experience
The practical learning experience combined different factors giving students the best learning opportunities. Our students from around the globe brought with them different cultural perspectives adding different perspectives and insights into problem-solving.
Professor Forint and Professor Xavier guided our students in interactive classes and provided them with all the knowledge need to develop their business plans and complete the program. Also, a variety of guests who spoke about their business experience have been a cherry on the top of this practical learning experience.
Case Study Competition
In the second week of their Toronto experience, students had the opportunity to work on a real-life marketing case study provided by Smarttones Media, our longtime partner who is increasing ad effectiveness through audience engagement.
A day with Smarttones media representatives was a rewarding experience, as students played the role of the marketing experts in Smarttones media. With just 12 hours to analyze and develop solutions, this time-critical exercise proved to be popular amongst students and we will for sure organize more of these activities in the future! Thanks to Smarttones Media team for making it happen and to students for amazing ideas!
Congrats to the winning team of Case Study Competition!
Business Plan Competition
Development
We gave our students 3 weeks to form a team, brainstorm ideas, write a business plan and then pitch it to a panel of esteemed judges! Some may think this is a mighty task, but students once again proved themselves by pulling out all the stops and creating some incredible business plans and pitches to be proud of.
Ideas
This challenging but very rewarding part of the program really demonstrated the importance of teamwork. Students had some very interesting ideas from social entrepreneurship to technology development covering a wide range of areas from tourism to finances! This was the pinnacle of the program, and the variety of student backgrounds allowed for different skills to be demonstrated in the teamwork. We proved once again that no business knowledge is needed to learn how to write a business plan and start a business.
Mentoring
To help students develop their ideas we were honored to host several mentors, whose expertise assisted students in developing their ideas and business plans! We host mentors with different fields of expertise from marketing to finance that helped students to keep the right track when developing a business plan!
Events & corporate visits
To see is to believe! To truly experience the working environment of Toronto, we took our participants to visits including Toronto Stock Exchange, Bank of Montreal and Soho Innovation Labs. Not only are these visits very interesting, students found them to be very inspiring and motivating. We also attended several networking events which allowed our participants to meet new contacts and connect with like-minded individuals.
Social events
Outside of the classroom, our ambassadors on-site organized several free time social events. We enjoyed getting to know our participants better over some casual drinks in the Distillery District, had an action-packed Scavenger Hunt across the city. Took a trip to Toronto Islands to relax on the beach, and much more! We made sure to show the students all that Toronto has to offer!
Our gratitude
We would like to express gratitude to all of our guest speakers, company hosts, professors, partners and students who made all of this happen and have created the best experience for the fifth edition of Toronto Business Academy!
