Two Amersham & Wycombe College students, Elyas Coutts and Mike Sutton, (Business BTEC National Diploma) worked with five other students from Buckinghamshire New University, Henley College and Wycombe High School to win top slot and a share in the £500 prize at the annual BNU Xing Enterprise Festival. The event took place at Buckinghamshire New University on Thursday, 24 November 2009.

Two other College business students, Imran Ahmed and Remneil Genito, also reached the final after competing against 10 other teams. All had to come up with an enterprising plan to launch a new product as part of a day-long competition.

Elyas said: “Our product was a fashionable t-shirt with flashing LED lights which could be customised to reflect the emotions of the wearer – a smiley face for someone who is happy and a sad face for someone who is sad. The LED lights could also be programmed to write a short text message.”

After winning their way though to the final, Elyas had just two minutes to pitch the idea to a panel of experts, who then voted to select the most enterprising idea.

Elyas said: “Only students from Amersham & Wycombe College had experience of actually pitching a business idea. Facing the Dragon’s in the College’s Enterprise Challenge the previous week paid off when it came to the presentation and proved invaluable for the final pitch.”

Business lecturer Alan Bird, was delighted to hear that the lessons learnt by Elyas during the BND Exploring Team Development unit, as well as the Amersham & Wycombe College Enterprise Challenge, helped him lead his team to victory. Other Amersham & Wycombe BND students who took part in the Xing event include second year business students Max Denning, Tejas Mehta, and Dean Bardawil and first year student Sam Bateman along with winners of the A&W College Enterprise Challenge, Foundation Studies learners Catherine O’Reilly, Emma Hardman, Kieron Dudley and Luke Robinson.

“This is the second year running that Amersham & Wycombe College students have featured in the winning team at the BNU Xing enterprise event,” said Alan. “To have the college represented on both teams that reached the final is a magnificent reflection on how well our students can do against tough competition in the real world.”