Nottingham gets a taste for business

14 May 2014

Mums, dads, grandparents, children and people of all ages enjoyed a free interactive day of exploration, learning and fun as the University of Nottingham opened its doors to the local community for May Fest 2014.

Now in its fifth year, May Fest has continued to expand the range of activities and events on offer and grow in popularity.

Following the success of last year’s involvement, Nottingham University Business School once again organised a ‘Business management games room’, providing an opportunity to learn more about the role business plays in society.

Popular games such as Scruples, Recycle It!, the Logo Board Game and guess the number of sweets in the jar gave visitors the chance to learn about key business concepts such as risk and reward, marketing, entrepreneurship, and business ethics.

At the Bank of Richard participants were encouraged to invest their piece of (chocolate) gold in a range of businesses, all promising a variety of returns on the roll of a dice. Would they chose the high risks and high returns of space tourism, a familiar brand, take the sustainable route and invest in renewable energy, or go for a responsible business that is investing in their local community?

The logo game demonstrated just how much visitors of all ages knew about brands and their role in shaping our individual consumer preferences. Families put their communication skills to the test via the challenge of building duplicate LEGO models using verbal descriptions only.

Recycling and sustainable development were illustrated by introducing visitors to the economics theory ‘Tragedy of the Commons and playing the entertaining younger children’s game, ‘Recycle It!.

The approach taken by the Business School to teaching business ethics through its International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility was shown with a game of Scruples, allowing the individual to explore their own ethical perceptions at the same time.

Visitors were invited to guess the number of sweets in the jar, an experiment designed to demonstrate how markets work, by testing how many participants were able to beat the market with a guess that was closer to the true value than the market value, and how many would have been better off accepting the market value.

A competition for children to design a logo for a new make-believe healthy fast food outlet in Nottingham produced some wonderfully original and imaginative ideas. Many congratulations to Joshua Chiziwa whose winning entry was deemed by the judging panel of Business School staff to project many of the features that make a good logo i.e. distinctive, simple, symmetrical, and excellent use of appropriate colours.