TBS wins double at 2020 Babson Awards

TBS is proud to announce a double victory at the Babson Collaborative! Our school has just won the 2020 Babson Collaborative Spotlight Award for its SEMIS entrepreneurial seminar. In parallel, two of our Bachelor in Management students have also won the First Prize in the Babson Collaborative Global Student Challenge.

The Babson Collaborative

The Babson Collaborative brings together higher education institutions from around the world that place entrepreneurship at the core of their programs. TBS was the first French business school to join this high-profile network. Every year, the Babson Collaborative grants one of its member schools the Spotlight Award for excellence and innovation in entrepreneurship education. Students from member schools can also participate in the Babson Global Student Challenge. For the 2020 edition of these challenges, TBS is proud to announce its victory on both counts!

The Babson Collaborative Spotlight Award

The Babson Collaborative Spotlight Award is an annual award given to a Babson Collaborative member institution that demonstrates excellence and innovation in entrepreneurship education. The award highlights the institution’s commitment to enhancing entrepreneurship education and its willingness to share and promulgate best practice and new possibilities. The Spotlight Award focuses on a particular innovation in entrepreneurship education that is making a significant impact. In 2020, TBS obtained the award for its innovative Seminar of Entrepreneurial Initiations (SEMIS). The distinction is a true recognition for the TBS teams and the quality of our teaching methods.

The TBS SEMIS Seminar

Created 3 years ago, the SEMIS is part of the TBS Master in Management program and is designed to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit of first-year students. The seminar places students in a real-life entrepreneurial situation for an entire week. It encourages them to use their creativity, develop agile solutions and rethink their approach to teamwork while developing leadership skills. For the 2020 SEMIS edition, 523 TBS students worked together in 63 teams. They were guided by their professors as well as by coaches from the professional world while working on 4 social challenges applied to TBS :

• Develop the collaboration of TBS student associations
• Reinvent the uses of our Toulouse Lascrosses campus
• Raise awareness of discrimination in student life
• Rethink the food supply at TBS

“SEMIS shakes up the usual landmarks of students and invites them to actively participate in their own training. The school, the teachers and the coaches help them follow through on their own ideas. Working and managing in a destabilizing and complex ecosystem is what our students are destined to do. The current health crisis proves this even more every day: the entrepreneurs and managers we train must be prepared to act and take decisive steps in uncertain environments. It is this creativity and leadership that we try to instill in our students. I am proud that this approach is rewarded by an institution like Babson.”

Stéphanie Lavigne, Dean of TBS

The Babson Collaborative Global Student Challenge

TBS is also proud to announce that two of our Bachelor students were awarded the first prize in the Babson Collaborative Global Student Challenge, which distinguishes students’ entrepreneurial projects that meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

The Mondin Project

or how to turn grapes into leather

Rodolphe Mondin and Julien Houssiaux are third year students in the TBS Bachelor in Management program, with a specialization in Innovation Management. Their project goes by the name of “Mondin” and was awarded first place by the Babson Collaborative jury, ahead of 16 other international participants. The young TBS entrepreneurs are working on an alternative to animal leather, using grape marc and biopolymers.

A new addition to the TBSeeds Incubator

The result is a material made from bio-sourced components that is less polluting than traditional or imitation leather. The Mondin project focuses on waste recovery and short-circuit production, as the local wine industry produces grape marc in abundance. With their project in the R&D phase, the two winners have joined TBSeeds, the school’s incubator, where they are finalizing the formula of this plant-based and environmentally friendly material intended for the luxury industry.