By Ruth Ormiston, Gustavson External Relations co-op student.
Innovation plays a fundamental role in Mission Impossible, an annual event in which teams of third-year BCom students present sustainable and socially responsible business ideas to a panel of judges. This year, Mission Impossible demonstrated the importance of innovative thinking more than ever before: in order to keep the tradition alive during the COVID-19 pandemic, BCom staff had to think outside the box and move Mission Impossible online while maintaining its core objectives. What ensued on Friday, October 2 was a successful competition that challenged more than 60 teams of BCom students to put their most creative and sustainable ideas forward – entirely over Zoom.
The overarching objective of Mission Impossible has always been for students to collaborate and develop a business solution that reflects Gustavson’s four pillars: Integration, Innovation, International, and Sustainability (hence the stylization “MIIISsion Impossible”). In the past, domestic students have teamed up with an international student and have been challenged to pitch a business concept that addresses an issue in the international student’s country of origin. With its theme of “Embracing ideas and diversity across borders,” this year’s adapted format remained true to these driving factors. Students were divided into teams and assigned a country; although not every team had an international student this year, those that did were assigned the student’s home country. Teams then went into breakout rooms with just over three hours to develop business ideas that would be not only sustainable and socially responsible, but also appropriate fits for their particular countries. Finally, each team also used a breakout room to present a three-minute pitch of their concept to a panel of judges.
By the time all of the students reunited on Zoom to hear the winners announced, the success of this year’s Mission Impossible had provided a concrete example of the event’s broader lesson: that contemporary issues must be solved by innovative thinking and by breaking with tradition. As Professor Heather Ranson highlighted on Friday, Mission Impossible is itself an innovative way of presenting new ideas, and her words rang particularly true during this year’s COVID-safe format. The BCom team’s decision to move Mission Impossible online for the safety of its students also embodied Dean Saul Klein’s message at the event: socially responsible solutions to today’s problems arise from doing things differently.
In fact, as businesses around the world are becoming increasingly conscious of their broader social impact and their moral responsibility to make this impact a positive one, Mission Impossible showcases how innovative ideas will create this social change. And with the event’s own shift online in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, students were able to experience firsthand how solving issues with creative thinking is a very important mission indeed.
