Students’ creative and strategic skills put to the test
A partnership between VBS and ThinkPlace gave Management students the chance to put theory into practice in a strategic design competition.
Students taking a third-year Management paper worked in groups to select an organisation and distill that organisation’s strategies into either single-page reports, or a short video using publicly available information.
While the assignment may sound easy, reducing a large amount of complex information to one page or a brief video is a frequent challenge for many organisations, so a practical application of work similar to that which strategic design consultancy ThinkPlace does for their clients was required.
Three ThinkPlace representatives gave a guest lecture to the Management class, and they then worked with Professor Stephen Cummings to select the best strategy designs.
Two groups were declared winners at a special awards event at the ThinkPlace studio: James Bowen, Julia Kennerley, Matthew Crawford and Ellen Jenkin focused on Lewis Road Creamery and won the award for best applied management theory, while Matt Wells, Ben Spence and Michael Varuhas won best visual design for their work focused on Weta Workshop.
Representatives from each team shared the processes they went through when creating the design, and had the opportunity to meet ThinkPlace's top designers.
ThinkPlace managing director Jim Scully said the talent on display made them excited to see how the partnership with Victoria could develop to support the students, and grow their creative and strategic skills.
"We’re honoured to recognise Victoria Business School students for their creative and strategic thinking skills. It’s exciting for us to partner with the University, which plays a critical role in shaping our economy, workplace capabilities and innovation.
"At ThinkPlace, we are in the business of creating sustainable social change in New Zealand and around the world, so we're proud to continue supporting initiatives like this."
This article was written by Daniel Ralphs, a third-year Victoria Business School student.