On the 29th March, Chris Walker put the knowledge he taught from his lecture series to test with a mock “Dragons Den” event.

We  were split into teams of 6 and briefed to create a new biological business.

Within the 3 hours we had we had to create our product and then complete the following:

• A business model canvas
  

  The sections within the canvas.

• A 4 minute pitch
• A 1 minute crowdfunding video

The business model canvas was key to this, as once filled out it will act as a framework for the other two parts.

Upon discussion one of our group members remembered reading an article on mushrooms that can eat plastic.

If distributed properly, we decided that these mushrooms could help solve the global problem of waste.

And so was born “Magic Munching Mushrooms Ltd.”

The premise was simple really, we would place these mushrooms in bins and instead of recycling our plastic, these mushrooms would decompose it.

In fact it was found that the plastic would decompose in a matter of months as opposed to 200 years.

These bins would be sold to the county council who would then distribute them.

We argued that these bins would not only save the environment but would also reduce council tax due to lower waste disposal costs.

The mushrooms could also be distributed to landfill sites and start decomposing the plastic already in the sites.

The session was only 3 hours long and after a  introduction it turned out we only had around 1 and a half hours to complete all 3 tasks due to presenting time at the end.

Due to this our group only managed to complete the crowdfunding video. As much as I’d like to show you this, I cannot due to the limitations that WordPress has on a free account.

This was not entirely a problem however as due to the large amount of groups in the room we didn’t manage to present our idea within the 3 hours anyway.

Despite not being able to present our idea, the entire day was very enjoyable and useful. Instead of just learning about creating a business we got to put this knowledge and skills to the test, which I think is very important especially when doing something like this. I feel the day was successful in the aspect that it allowed us to get experience in creating our own business.