The Penta Foundation has announced the winners in the 8th annual essay competition Vision 2025. The competition committee, comprised of Penta representatives, has selected 6 essays out of 83 entries and divided EUR 16,000 of prize money among the winners. The winning essays stood out for their originality, logical conclusions and expertise in the given field.
Two of the winners are not new to the imaginary podium – Miroslav Tabernaus with his essay “The four building stones, missing from the foundations of modern banking” and Beata Bogusz with “Banking 2025” have both taken part in the Vision 2025 before and have been among the selected winners. In their essays for this year’s competition, they focused on the development of banking services and products.
“We were very pleased by the level of interest and the quality of work presented. Penta is active in both health care and banking industry, so the visions of the upcoming generation are an inspiration to us. As identified by the students, we see considerable opportunity for involving the private sector in health care to improve its quality and efficiency and the same applies for retail banking,” said Jaroslav Haščák, Penta’s Managing Partner.
“We see from the several years we have been doing this that the level of thinking and knowledge of university students in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland is getting better every year. I would like to thank all participating students for sharing their visions with us,” added Haščák.
Winners of the 8th annual Vision 2025 competition:
1st place (EUR 5,000) – Miroslav Tabernaus (University of Economics, Prague) and Beata Bogusz (Warsaw School of Economics)
2nd place (EUR 3,000) – Jakub Šindelář (University of Economics, Prague)
3rd place (EUR 1,000) – Paweł Chrzan (Warsaw School of Economics), Martin Smatana (Imperial College London) and Martin Kolář (First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague)
The winning essays will be published on Penta’s Website. The winners will be invited to an award ceremony in Prague.
79 university students from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland took part in this year’s Vision 2025, with essays concerning the following topics:
1. Banking 2025. What are you missing the most in banking services as a client? Where should banking services and products be in 2025? How will the interaction between the bank and the client look in 2025?
2. Health Care 2025. Why is the health sector always short of money? Where is the biggest opportunity for making health care more efficient? Will the health care be more efficient in 2025?
3. Public vs. private interest. The will of people vs. development and infrastructure projects. Who and how should be the one solving the conflicts between the private interests of an investor and the interests of the public in question (towns, municipalities, communities, citizens)?
The competition is organised by Penta with a goal of awarding original thoughts of young people concerning business and public life. In all 8 years of Vision 2025, a total of 573 essays took part, 66 of which were selected for awards. A total of EUR 83,000 was awarded to winners in the competition’s 8 year history.