About Next Generation

Next Generation aims to encourage students to be the next generation change-makers of the society by presenting them with the various societal challenges that the future generations might face. The objectives of Next Generation are:

1. To inspire the student community with social entrepreneurship possibilities.
2. To raise awareness among student community of the social issues and encourage them to take the initiative to solve them.
3. To build a network of aspiring and established social entrepreneurs.
4. To raise awareness of the vibrant entrepreneurial community in NTU.

Next Generation challenges the students to brainstorm for solutions to problems that the future poses. The event is broken into three segments, namely The Social Wave, Toolkit and The Epilogue.

The Social Wave was conducted as a panel series discussion where Ms Elim Chew and Mr Tong Yee were invited to share their stories of being entrepreneurs in their respective fields and the challenges faced along the way. The enthusiastic audience actively participated in the discussion as they posed question after question to the panel who patiently answered each and every one of them. As the theme was on social entrepreneurship, many participants were curious about the financial sustainability and independent nature of such an enterprise. Hence, when the question of whether grants should be taken up during the initial start up stage, Tong Yee and Elim have different takes on it. Tong Yee feels that grants may cripple as it gives false hope that the firm is financially safe. Entrepreneurs tend to miscalculate their cost and expenses, and problems start to snowball when they overspend. In addition, an entrepreneur may lose some of their initial desire to gain financial independence if they know that there’s always this grant up for grabs. His stand was to stay as independent as possible, also to avoid the possibility of giving away equity to investors, hence diluting decision power as to direction and growth of the  social enterprise. On Elim’s side, she has no strong objections to taking grants if these are needed for sustaining the business. However, she stressed on the need to be very careful with handling of the funds and to adhere to a strict budgeting plan.

Toolkit was organised as a series of workshops aimed to equip the participants of Next Generation with the technical skills needed for them to make their preparation. The event invited Ms Evangeline Leong, from GetKobe, to share her experience in embracing digital marketing and how she grew her business from a three man small start-up to a regional company with 60 employees, as well as Makers’ Lab, from RE Club, on how the basics to designing mouses and cars with AutoCAD.

The last of the segment, The Epilogue, allowed aspiring entrepreneurs to have an opportunity to pitch their business idea to a panel of judges. A total of close to 30 teams submitted their proposals and seven teams, selected based on the feasibility and social impact of their idea, pitched for cash prizes and access to grant funding. In the end, the three teams that won were:

• Gift Guild – a platform to create crowd sourced foundations.
• Impluvium – a smart network that separates grey water from wastewater and clean water, harvests rainwater and water from different household or office devices in order to give direct new use to all this water.
• Strong Mind Fit Body – a programme that make strength training fun, safe and accessible to the population who need it most, the elderly.

Task VS People Relationships

Planning this event together also highlighted the importance of listening before taking an action. Especially when a group effort as such is required, we might be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work to be completed, often neglecting the suggestions and viewpoints of the team mates which can turn out to be really useful. We tended to be more task-oriented as we wanted to “complete” all the necessary work that’s supposed to be done, but on hindsight, nurturing relationships with external collaborators and our team members and really focusing on achieving the relationship goals with these partners are also what constitutes the success of this event. We vividly recalled an incident where a member suggested the use of an online poll system to conduct the Q&A session, which worked out really well. We can go fast with an individual effort, but to go far, we need everyone on board.

The Memories

Ms Elim Chew: “Go, Get, Grab – which is to execute whatever plans you have in mind and work towards it, never hesitate or procrastinate.”

Mr Tong Yee sharing his insights.

A full house at The Know-how of Digital Marketing.

Finalists at The Epilogue!

Reflection #1 – The Challenges

Resource Allocation

On the premises that a five member team initiated and planned the whole event, there were a lot of resource limitations on our side, especially with regards to the manpower needed to execute the series of events. Although the responsibilities were clearly assigned, during the execution we were not able to adapt fast enough to abrupt changes in the event schedule. An example was during the Social Wave when we did not foresee that a photo-taking with the speakers would be so popular, and hence, there was an oversight on our part to assign a member for crowd control duty.

Managing Q&A

We were surprised to have irrelevant comments and questions during our Q&A sections. We used sildo.io as our platform to collate all questions from the audience while displaying them on screen. These irrelevant comments and nonconstructive questions disturbed the momentum of the event and it was challenging to ensure the smooth flow of discussion.

Collection of Payment

Initially we wanted to have an online collection platform using paypal, however we noticed it was too much of a hassle to do that. Thus we concluded that we should physically collect the fee during the talk itself. However during the actual collection, we actually spent more time than expected as we lack crowd control and clear instructions to the audience regarding payment. As a result, our event flow was pushed back and the participants had a shorter refreshment duration than expected. We learnt from this mistake and improved our payment system for the next workshop – The Toolkit.

Reflection #2 – The Takeaways

Planning [Way] Ahead

Time management was invariably a critical factor for every member starting from the moment the idea was conceived and to execution. We started planning three months before the event so as to give ourselves plenty of time to think through all the details of the event. We learnt that all the small details that we may overlook, such as the registration procedures, are what actually builds up to the whole event and hence, we couldn’t afford to miss out any. Planning ahead ensures that there’s still enough time to execute plan B if the initial plan did not work out, and given that each of us has other academic and non-academic commitments, it also ensures that team members have enough time to plan their schedules around their event planning responsibilities.

Articulating Feedback

Our team always put in the effort to do a quick debrief, with the main purpose to share our learning points and also how future events can be improved. These debrief sessions are a good way to hear other organising members’ takeaways that can be useful to an individual as well. By articulating out loud, this also reinforces one’s learning and commitment to the learning points that has been brainstormed.From these sharing, we learn how each of us can better cooperate with each other and complement each other’s working styles. An effective way to give feedback, regardless positive or negative, is to state the thing that the person did and mention how that made you feel. Usually, we are too quick to give judgements rather than a constructive feedback. This was also the time to learn from any mistakes to make the next event just that much more successful.