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Flux 500 - New Event

In 2008 a team of five Lancaster University students took part in the Regional finals of FLUX500, a business planning game.

When most people were still in bed, Hamza Anwar, (Management), Claire Ball (Management and Organisations), Francois Firket (Law and Entrepreneurship), Martina Kancyte (Marketing) and Himanshu Kumar (Management) made up the strong team to battle on behalf of Lancaster University against Universities from across the North West.

Claire Ball tells us all what it was really like:

“I don’t think any of us quite anticipated how challenging the day ahead would be when we were in the taxi journey going to Manchester Metropolitan University where the Xing regional competitions were being held. After we had arrived and collected our name badges for Lancaster University, along with the rest of the teams we were briefed on the day’s events which seemed quite demanding considering how much was planned for one day! Xing as we found out was a decision making board game and once the whistle blew and we had picked our case study scenario from the large red shiny envelopes we had to get to work straight away.

We began to brainstorm and plan our business strategy using the Xing training tool accompanied by meetings with business experts to discuss our plans and ideas, changing our business strategy accordingly. All of this was in preparation for a final presentation – a dragon’s den style scenario where we had to convince our ‘investors’ of our product and growth ideas, as well as try and answer their challenging questions. As a team, despite not getting through to the final round, we came away with a much clearer idea of the building blocks a business has to go though, and having not met each other before, worked especially hard on our team working and communication skills, all of which came with the added task of doing it all under pressure and in a very limited time period, definitely improving our decision making and time management skills too. The day finished with a rewards ceremony of certificates and networking with the business experts and we all went home with not only an enjoyable experience, but an example to use in the future of how much we learned from becoming entrepreneur’s for the day!”

Lyndsey Egerton from CEEC says,

“It was so exciting to see the whole team working so well together. The day was challenging but the team did a great job and I hope they feel like they benefitted from the day too. The Regional finals of FLUX happen once a year so watch out for the event happening again!”

Here are some photos taken throughout the day:

The early morning view from the taxi!