What is the NSSEC (National Secondary Schools Entrepreneurship Competition 2017)?
NSSEC is a business simulation competition where youths can acquire business training and development. They'll gain hands-on experience that would help them to put into practice classroom theory while using premier business simulation training.
The Competition
The competition will be administered using a business simulation software called: Innovative Learning Solutions’ Marketplace Live (ILS). The game is accessible online, from any internet connected computer with a browser and does not require the download of any special programs. All participants are issued a license code, username and password that allows play in the dynamic simulation. Teams are scored based on the balanced scorecard approach, which encompasses ten measures of performance including:
- Financial performance
- Investment in the future
- Human resource management
- Marketing effectiveness
- Manufacturing efficiency
- Market performance
- Wealth
- Asset management
- Financial risk
- Total performance
Gameplay is organised into 6 decision-making periods each one week apart, as to allow for team collaboration and analysis. Before the weekly decision deadline, all teams will input and submit their decisions. The game then simulates ‘3 months’ of business activity based upon the individual team decisions, and importantly, based on the impact of the decisions of competing teams.
Every week after the teams submit their decisions, a published leader board will reflect the current standings of the competition. Teams will learn to adapt and overcome obstacles created by the competition and the environment to succeed and how to alter their strategy to be successful.
The Team
Teams will be divided into 8 regions across Trinidad and Tobago (no need to be based on geographic location). Each region will host 8 teams, including up to 5 individual players, to compete with the 7 other teams in their region. Players ideally would be in Forms 4 – 6 (14 – 19 years old) as of the first term of the 2017 calendar year, and while an academic business background is a plus, is it by no means a necessity. The competition will be open to boys, girls and mixed gender schools who all compete on a level playing field. Indeed, the competition will serve to be inclusive and accessible to all secondary schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago.
Players on the same team will have access to their company’s information, however, the information they receive on competing teams will be limited to information that would be publicly available in a real world scenario. Teams must learn to make decisions based on limited information and deal with the implications of doing so. Participants develop the skills of being innovative in their thinking, proactive in the decision-making, strategic in their risk taking and balancing the costs of doing so with the potential rewards.
The Prize
The winning school team from each of the 8 regions will each receive TT$10,000 as well as prizes and awards to individual students and teams, for a total cash prize pool of TT$100,000. The winning teams will also be awarded comprehensive business coaching and business plan development with SBL who can guide the student entrepreneurs. The team with the highest score on the balanced scorecard as calculated by the simulation amongst all the game will be awarded the NSSEC challenge trophy, which will be up for grabs annually.
