Final year Executive MBA students taking Dr Nathaniel Massa’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation elective with the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy, presented their business start-up concepts to a panel of seasoned professionals active in the entrepreneurship scene at a GEW 2019 pitching event. The event was held on 18 November, 2019. Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) is hosted in Malta by the Edward de Bono Institute at the University of Malta.
This event was aligned with the MBA participants’ semester-long business start-up idea and feasibility analysis project which forms an integral part of their elective.
The international MBA class teams, which this year also included participants from the M.A. Insurance & Risk Management programme, presented various innovative business concepts ranging from convenience and lifestyle services, and tech-based solutions, to transportation concepts, and app-based ideas – to a panel of professionals familiar with the start-up scene, hailing from areas associated with early-stage mentoring, foresight and creativity, knowledge management and IP, crowdfunding, and business consulting.
The review panel comprised: Dr Leonie Baldacchino, Director, Edward Debono Institute, Dr Ing Anton Bartolo, Director, Corporate Research & Knowledge Transfer, Mr Matthew Caruana (Manager, ZAAR Crowdfunding, and Foundation for the Promotion of Entrepreneurial Initiatives (FPEI)), and Dr Jana Hojnik (Entrepreneurship scholar and lean start-up evangelist, University of Primorska, Slovenia).
The opportunity provided the cohort of practicing professionals on the Executive MBA programme with useful insight and an extent of stress-testing relevant to the feasibility and further pursuit of their business start-up ideas.