What Does a Sustainable Future Look Like – Through the Eyes of Young People
On Friday, May 16, 2025, International Burch University in Sarajevo hosted the final of the Green Tech Entrepreneurship Challenge competition. Over the course of two weeks, 210 students from 15 secondary schools across Bosnia and Herzegovina—organized into teams—worked on solving real-world challenges in the field of green technology.
Using the GTECH platform, students addressed 10 real challenges defined by partner companies, developing entrepreneurial solutions focused on sustainability and innovation.
From Ideas to Real Impact
The goal of the GTECH project was not merely to create a competition, but to provide young people with hands-on experience in solving real business challenges. Through intensive work with mentors and support from partners, students developed 30 concrete ideas, which they presented to an audience and an expert jury.
As emphasized by Miro Hegedić, PhD from Smion:
“One of the key reasons why entrepreneurial ideas fail is because they do not address real market problems. Through the Green Tech Entrepreneurship Challenge project, we wanted to help these young teams overcome that challenge—by connecting them with companies that have real-world problems and enabling students to work on solving them. If they find a solution to a real challenge, they will be able to apply it.”
GTECH as an Educational Innovation
The GTECH project, implemented through the Erasmus+ program, connects schools, entrepreneurship centers, and innovators from across the region. As a partner, Smion actively contributed to the development and implementation of the platform, which enables experiential learning and collaboration between education and industry.
Through projects like this, young people gain concrete opportunities to develop future-ready skills and build confidence in solving real-world problems—with the support of mentors and industry professionals.
Next Steps
The final in Sarajevo highlighted the strong potential of the next generation of entrepreneurs. The project continues by connecting schools and partners across the region and further developing the GTECH platform to support new challenges and competitions.
