We are delighted to announce that we have just launched the second edition of the Chamber’s Business Case Competition, which gives tertiary students and fresh graduates the opportunity to solve real-life issues for businesses. Last year’s inaugural event had a great response and we were extremely impressed by the very high standard of entries.

The competition involves several stages, including online judging and mentoring by corporate sponsors, and presentations from the finalists. Participants must demonstrate innovative ideas, strategic thinking and in-depth research in their projects, and the teams that make it through to the mentoring stage also have the opportunity to cooperate with staff from the sponsor companies to flesh out and refine their ideas. 

We saw last year that the students had clearly worked very hard to translate their ideas into actionable business plans, and the finalists all delivered extremely professional pitches to the judges. All of them were superb ambassadors for Hong Kong’s younger generation.

So we decided to make the Business Case Competition an annual event, to complement our Business-Schools Partnership Programme, which has been running for almost 20 years.

Providing a link between high school and tertiary students and the business community gives Hong Kong’s young people a valuable introduction to the wide range of careers and opportunities available. The Chamber is very happy to provide this bridge, along with our members who act as corporate sponsors and partners to schools.

This aspect of the Chamber’s work is particularly important right now, as young people in Hong Kong are facing an extremely uncertain future amid the Covid-19 pandemic and high youth unemployment. This gives us all the more incentive to support the younger generations by broadening their horizons and giving them new opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge. 

The Business Case Competition is not the only major event the Chamber is working on at the minute. Autumn is when we usually host our biennial flagship event, the Business Summit. We know that members enjoy the networking opportunities at this forum as well as our top-class speakers. So, to give us the best chance of holding the Summit in its usual format, we have decided to shift the date forward to early next year. Of course, this will be dependent on the pandemic situation, but we hope that in-person events will resume reasonably soon, and we look forward to welcoming you to the Chamber’s Business Summit in just a few months’ time.

George Leung
[email protected]