York County Regional Chamber Paired Local Business Leaders with Future Innovators
Staff Report From York County CEO
Monday, November 12th, 2018
The York County Regional Chamber of Commerce recently hosted its annual Ignite Your Innovation event with a focus on the future leaders of entrepreneurship and industry. With an expanded agenda from past years, Ignite brought local business representatives together at Tega Cay’s Glennon Center with nearly 100 high school and college students from across York County. Each of nine participating companies presented a specific challenge that affects their business’ day-to-day operations, while students employed a design-thinking approach in order to come up with innovative solutions to address each challenge.
As many businesses in our area have identified soft-skills as a vital characteristic in prospective employees, the Chamber’s mission in developing and growing this program has been to expose students to real-life needs and problem-solving techniques. Ryan Sanderson, co-owner of Knowledge Perk, a local coffee roasting company, shared his thoughts as an event participant. “As a business owner, to talk to someone about a real challenge that you are facing and having students who do not have to worry about what they say, from an employment standpoint, was incredible. The feedback was honest and unfiltered. They saw the issues with a fresh pair of eyes and a totally different prospective. Overall the experience was incredibly valuable.”
This unique experience, provided as part of the Chamber’s Workforce Development efforts, gave students the opportunity to have direct interaction with business leaders and, as a result, provided the potential for building long lasting professional relationships. Isaiah Fitzgerald, a freshman at York Technical College and Ignite participant commented that “There is a difference between learning in the classroom and learning in the real world…10 minutes into the first activity I knew this was a different kind of event.”