On Tuesday, June 18, 2024, the Student Products Fair was held at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics. It is a project that for several years, with the support of the teachers in the subject Entrepreneurship in the 3rd year of the undergraduate study of Entrepreneurship Economics, has been organized by students with the aim of simulating real business, where they themselves acquire inputs for production, organize and realize the production process, define the price strategy and ultimately strengthen their sales skills.
In addition to all that, in cooperation with colleagues from the Undergraduate Study of Information and Business Systems, they use the Trade Fair application, which serves customers to find the desired product. This kind of fair, as a simulation of a real business environment, emphasizes the ability of our students to connect economic and IT knowledge, while at the same time developing their entrepreneurial spirit - believes the dean of the Faculty, Full Prof. Marina Klačmer Čalopa, Ph.D. who together with professors, Associate Professor Irena Konecki, Ph.D., Associate Professor Kristina Detelj, Ph.D. and Tamara Šmaguc, Ph.D. directs students through the process of designing, creating and placing products "on the market". The mentors are members of the FOI Entrepreneurship Laboratory, which aims to initiate entrepreneurial initiatives and guide students to the development of their own entrepreneurial venture (startup) and general entrepreneurial activity in career development.
The Trade Fair application is used to sell and buy student products, designed by IT students at FOI For this fair, students, in a team of three or four students, created value by designing and creating products, while the means of circulation and payment was the FOI POP currency, specially designed for the occasion. Namely, in cooperation with the team of Assoc. Prof. Zlatko Stapić, Ph.D. from the Laboratory for Applied Software Engineering of the FOI, a special Trade Fair application was designed for that occasion, through which customers could find the desired product. Members of the Laboratory for Applied Software Engineering prepared a version of the application that was built for multiple platforms and that we tested this year as well. Students created a profile of their company or OPG in the application, then entered their products, and customers selected the desired products and paid for them by scanning a QR code or entering a purchase code. In this way, economic students could improve their technical knowledge and IT skills.
Participating in the fair is one of the activities by which students acquire the necessary points for passing the course. The innovation and quality of the product, arrangement of the point of sale, sales skills and realized income are scored, and in this they are evaluated by the so-called secret shoppers.
See how creative students were this year in the photo gallery...
