Barilla Good4: The Teams That Will Be Tutored at Speed MI Up
It was the triumph of smart choices, organic food, plans to shorten the supply chain, cold pressed beverages sold through an app, native seeds, educational programs for children. The winners of Barilla Good4 – Start Up The Future, the international contest launched by Barilla with SDA Bocconi School of Management and the Speed Up MI incubator, were announced today. It was attended by 256 young people under 30 from 14 countries (Italy, USA, Spain, Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Belarus, China, Greece, Haiti, India, Netherlands, Norway, Turkey) who submitted 84 different projects. Yesterday the concepts that had reached the finals were presented in front of an international jury at SDA Bocconi. The awards ceremony of the six winners was held today at the Barilla headquarters in Parma.
The contestants were asked to develop a business plan for a project in the food sector designed to promote environment and social sustainable development, a way of doing business that Barilla has summarized in the slogan "Good for you, good for the planet". There were four categories: Good4 our Wellbeing (nutrition and food safety projects); Good4 our Planet (environmental and supply chain projects); Good4 our Communities (social inclusion projects); Good4 our Knowledge (projects for or promoting and communicating the cultural value of food).
The Smartfood project by Cesare Alfredo Guerreri e Marco Casassa was the winner in the Good4 our Wellbeing category. It aims to sell organic foods based on nutritional values certified by a scientific committee. Sashaktiran by Gaurav e Abhishek Sharma (Good4 our Planet) proposes a business model that connects farmers and retailers and promises to eliminate three huge problems in Indian agriculture: indebtedness, lack of education, wastage. Haitian Heirloom Seed Bank by Junior Beauvais, Fang Wan, Enel Delice (Good4 our Communities, pictured above) aims to reintroduce in the agricultural system of Haiti native crop seeds replaced since the 1980s by genetically modified seeds.
There were three winners in the Good4 our Knowledge category. They already had free access to the Master of Management in Food & Beverage program at SDA Bocconi. My Real Food by Caio Ribeiro is an educational program designed to support and stimulate smart food choices, from planning a balanced meal to shopping for the best ingredients. Seeding the Future by Burcu Yakupoglu aims to create awareness among children about the sustainability and the cultural aspects of food. Raw, Nutritional, Cold-Pressed Beverages by Svetoslav Stoyanov wants to reach consumers through a system of mobile and static selling points, online and app features and provide them with cold-pressed vegetables and fruit drinks.
The best projects, says Alberto Grando, Vice Rector for development at Bocconi University and member of the jury, stood out for the better consistency between the team's skills and the project itself, the originality of the idea, the effectiveness of the message, the accuracy of the business plan, the characteristics of the team, the degree of multidisciplinarity, the perspectives of future application. "The contest strengthens the partnership between Barilla and Bocconi, and lies at the intersection between the sensitivity to the issue of sustainability, to which the world must look with increasing attention, and the choice to give young people a real chance to build their own business".
Winners got a prize of 15,000 Euros each for starting up the activity covered in the project description. "We do not reward them and then leave", says Ylenia Tommasato of Barilla Group Global Sustainability Unit. "The cash prize is adjoined by a six-month tutoring at Speed MI Up or, in the case of the Good4 our Knowledge category, the participation in the master. We offer them the best tools to develop their ideas. Barilla wants to support and enhance the youthful product and process innovation that is mindful of the idea of sustainability: we have to do responsible business for the present and future generations. The talents discovered through Barilla Good4 are the potential leaders of tomorrow".