Surrey: Student Enterprise

Student Enterprise at the University of Surrey took a different approach to prize-giving at its latest annual Hackathon17 this year. Instead of cash prizes of the past, the winning team of students participated in a bespoke Socials Leaders Programme with ProjectCHAKRA and lived the values of the UN SDGs. The themes of the programme were enterprise, innovation and personal leadership development . Their experience spanned meeting grassroots entrepreneurs in India’s informal labour market and NGOs working with slum communities, to multi-national scientific venture funds and UNDP partner social enterprises. The programme was “transformational” according to the students – read more here.

 Latvian Entrepreneurs at Anglia Ruskin University 

‘Last month, the Anglia Ruskin University hosted a week-long Latvia-Cambridge Venture Camp (LCVC) in collaboration with Cambridge Worldwide Associates, CONNECT Latvia, Riga Technical University, the University of Latvia, and the College of Business Administration

During a full programme of visits and workshops, the LCVC fostered a vibrant environment where participants discussed product and business development, finances, marketing, and entrepreneurial mindsets. The week culminated in a brilliant set of 10 pitches by Venture Camp attendees, who received feedback and guidance on their business ideas, and a celebratory awards dinner at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. What an enthusiastic, bright, and engaged group!’

Buckingham: Two teams of Buckingham Medical Students awarded £1000 each after a short Clinical Innovation and Enterprise course and pitch.
On 1^st September 2023 two teams of University of Buckingham medical students pitched to “Buckingham Angels” at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust Research & Innovation Centre in Stoke Mandeville Hospital with an audience of nurses, doctors and BHT CEO.  Much to everyone’s amazement, one of the Angels, Philanthropist Dr. Roger Jefcoate, personally awarded both teams £1000 to encourage them to work with Buckingham Enterprise and Innovation Unit and BHT Research & Innovation Centre to develop and commercialise their Apps. More Information here.

Greenwich:  ‘Educational Leader of the Year’ award

After being nominated and shortlisted in August, the Generator at University of Greenwich has won the ‘Educational Leader of the Year’ award at the Foundervine Changemaker Awards 2023. This award recognises an education company that has made significant strides in revolutionising the way people learn, teach, and interact with educational resources. Foundervine work to remove the social and economic barriers to innovation, disrupting the status quo in everything they do.  Lynette Lisk, Generator Programmes Manager said, “It is an honour to win Education Leader of the Year and see the hard work the Generator team has put into empowering students through enterprise recognised.”

KCL: London Demo Day 2023

20 start-ups from Imperial, King’s College London, LSE and UCL pitched their innovations to an audience of 400+, including 200+ investors, partners, students and alumni, who had gathered in King’s College London’s Bush House building for London Demo Day. 2023 marks the first year that LSE have joined the event. 50% of the pitching start-ups were health-related and all aligned with social impact. Since 2019, 45 innovative teams have pitched through this collaboration, collectively raising £45m+. Read more here.

Applications now open for EEUK Committees

EEUK is supported by a number of committees with specific responsibilities, all of which make a valuable contribution to the successful operations of the organisation. Serving on an EEUK committee is a great opportunity to raise your profile within the enterprise education community, and to network with other EE professionals.

The committees are populated by volunteers from our community of EEUK Associates; that is, any employee of our Member organisations that identifies with our purpose of enabling excellence in enterprise education and start-up support.

We are now pleased to announce that applications are being welcomed for two of our committees.

Nominations and Representation Committee

Chair: Megan Powell Vreeswijk

This committee supports the election of EEUK Directors and the appointment of EEUK Associates to the Advisory Council and the Board’s Sub-committees. It is also responsible for monitoring equality, diversity and inclusion across the organisation and its committees. There are four places on the committee for EEUK Associates, and there are currently four vacancies.

Governance and Risk Committee

Chair: Steve Aicheler

As well as supporting the governance of EEUK and overseeing its financial performance, this committee is responsible for the environmental impact of our organisation and activities, and the relationships we have with strategic partners. Members will also be involved with business development activity to support the growth of EEUK. There are three places on this committee for EEUK Associates and there are currently 2 vacancies. We are particularly interested to hear from EEUK Associates with experience in risk management, charity/CIC governance or financial management.

To apply for any vacancies for EEUK Associates please complete the Committee Nomination Form, selecting the group you are interested in. If you are interested in more than one group, you will need to submit for each group that you’d like to be considered for.

EEUK is setting up three new advisory networks focussed on the three professional pathways that EEUK Associates identify with and are recognised by the EEUK Fellowship: Academic, Practitioner and Influencer.

The Academic/Practitioner/Influencer Networks are advisory groups to the EEUK Board but do not hold a formal role in the governance of EEUK. Each Network has the following principal aims:

1. To provide a forum for individual associate members who identify with a particular professional pathway to meet (online or face to face), to discuss relevant issues and topics associated with their professional pathway;
2. To advise the EEUK Board of issues and opportunities related to the relevant professional pathway.
3. To generate ideas and options for consideration by the Board and its Committees with regard to problems and opportunities faced by the relevant professional pathway.
4. To provide feedback to the Board about EEUK’s products, services and plans for the future from the perspective of the relevant pathway.

For more information about the work of the Networks, please read the Terms of Reference here.

Applications are now being invited from EEUK Associates who wish to put themselves forward to chair any of the three Networks. Please apply via the form on the EEUK website. Closing date: 27th October 2023

Complete and share – survey for new EEUK SIG in light of climate and ecological crisis 

A survey has opened to gather input to inform a proposal for a new Special Interest Group (SIG), for educators interested and concerned about how Enterprise Education should change in light of unsustainability challenges.

The survey was launched at a lunch-and-learn session at IEEC at the University of Surrey, where participants had a brief introduction to Business-as-Usual trendlines, climate tipping points and social tipping points.

At this session participants discussed their personal and professional concerns about the climate crisis, what should change in Enterprise Education and what they would want from a new SIG (the three questions that the survey includes).

An interesting question was posed (by Matteo Giusti, a Future Fellow from the University of Surrey who presented in the Sustainable Development Goals track), who said participants should ask themselves what Enterprise Education/Educators should stop doing (rather than just what they should just innovate).

The survey is open to any educator or stakeholder interested in informing the SIG proposal. The SIG proposal is being convened by Catherine Brentnall, from Manchester Metropolitan University’s Department for Strategy, Enterprise and Sustainability and David Higgins, from the University of Liverpool’s Management School. A dissemination event for the EEUK-supported research project Catherine and David developed last year – Enterprise Education and Planetary Sustainability: What can EE do?  – is also being planned.

The survey will be open for a month and responses will inform the proposal as well as providing a mechanism for interested colleagues to express an interest in getting involved.

Complete the survey/share the link here: https://forms.gle/jjErcfDrE7XQNev67

Photo by CardMapr.nl on Unsplash

All enterprise educators know that their work can extremely tightly focused, when working with particular disciplines or sector-starts, and yet we are informed by the broader issues, which shape our learners, their future working lives, the communities in which they work, and/or sectors in which they seek to start up in.

EEUK’s policy work seeks to appreciate how these agendas impact upon our work and, in this blog, seeks to update on:

Global Skills Agenda: With the apparent ‘demise’ of the term ‘soft skills’ (as we collectively acknowledge that nothing about them is soft, squishy, mellow, or muted!) working online as heightened our understanding that interpersonal, communication and other key skills that need active support and development throughout a career. Recent changes such as hybrid working (Coursera 2023) has shown that whist, access to the internet is inevitably tied to individual economic opportunity, the learning gender gap can be closed by online learning (as seen with significant shifts in areas such as Kazakhstan, USA, Philippines, Thailand, Mexico and Spain).

International Students: With many members frustrated by the Home Office visa changes (see here for your questions, answered) it is clear, from the work of our colleagues at Tenentrepreneurs that foreign born founders build the UK’s fastest growing businesses. Their call for a Passport to Progress looks at other countries, such as Canada, China to create a blueprint for the future. EEUK welcomed this call, frustrated by the limits on test trading that are inhibiting our own graduates from starting up in the UK, looking to MPs to remove the barriers to staff and students innovating and creating UK businesses.

Knowledge Exchange: Amanda Selveratnam, University of York, shared the importance of Knowledge Exchange with delegates at IEEC2023, explaining that, whether you are in a funded role or not (Nation State Innovation funding, such as HEIF in England or the Scottish Funding Council’s University Innovation Fund (UIF)) metrics, knowledge exchange and “being part of what you want to see” is key.

Whilst the nation states may take different approaches, the underpinning need to “shout about” what you do, sharing your stories, metrics, and successes with your senior team is key.  By understanding what your institution reports on (whether under teaching, research, or knowledge exchange) you can find your place in each agenda and anchor your activity as core.  Through an appreciation of institutional drivers, you have the opportunity to explain how your #EntEd #3E work provides contributions in these key areas, and how you support the student experience, knowledge exchange and role in the wider community.

Students are at the heart of what we do and why we do it, so when Dame Sally Davies declared in that the legacy of covid lockdowns “we have damaged a generation” (2023) and that “education has a terrific amount of work to do” we continue to seek to understand their experience, in order to improve our offer.

2022 saw the release of a key report that helps us understand our graduate entrepreneurs. NCUB’s insight report shows the role that universities have in start-ups, as well as providing evidence for the pull of the familiar (or potentially the lower cost accommodation options as students “go home to start up”).  This potentially challenges our understanding of student needs and invites EEUK members to question the approach/resources needed to support these returning entrepreneurs.

As has the evidence from Prospects/Luminate survey (June 2023) that rather than seeking in person careers advice,student’s “go-to” for advice is website and family/friends.  What then is the experience as enterprise educators/start up advisors? And what does this mean for our offer?

Personalised service/support can make the difference, as does shining a light on the under-represented (The Rose Progress review 2023 report) supported by monitoring to understand take up and impact – and to support this, thee is more sector-sharing on through Knowledge Exchange Concordat – check out the new resources/cases!

As the cost of living crisis as well as the impact of covid (Cosmo Study 2023) as continues to impact our students, their experience (HEPI 2023) and our way of working,  we are also looking to AI to see if the lives of our future students and graduates will be easier – or just different.

But things are clearly different for our international graduates seeking to start-up in a post Brexit UK, so when the Home Office asked if we had any questions at our online event in April, the answer was yes! (and their answers, to your questions, are here). And this month sees colleagues at the APPG Entrepreneurship suggesting an entirely new “Blueprint for the World’s Most Pro-Innovation Visa System” (Sept 2023).

But we see that Scotland is leading the agenda with a clear vision for “Innovation in Scotland” (in its Innovation Strategy) which sees the development of the “entrepreneurial campus” through a 10 step plan of recommendations, providing an institutional check list for us to challenge our progress against and making Scotland’s institutions “the ones to watch”.

Enterprise Educators UK (EEUK) welcomes the spotlight that APPG for Entrepreneurship are currently placing on the UK visa system with the launch of the report “A blueprint for the World’s Most Pro-Innovation Visa System” (Sept 2023). EEUK members who work to support start-ups, spinouts, and innovation from across UK educational institutions, have been calling for changes to effectively support our international entrepreneurial students and graduates as they seek to start their businesses in the UK.

Following recent changes in the UK visas and immigration system (April 2023) EEUK held an online event which showed the concern that our members have for their international students seeking to bring new ideas and innovation to UK markets. EEUK recognises the value in a “dual intent” student visa and calls for changes to the student visa to permit students to research, test-trade and validate business ideas during their studies. EEUK also recognises that while the current Graduate Route visa permits self-employment and start-up activity, there is currently no simple route to establishing a long-term business in the UK.

With recent research from Tenentrepreneurs (August 2023) indicating that international founders build the fastest growing businesses, our members want to support and advance this for the benefit of the UK economy. The international comparisons within the Blueprint report shows how the current UK system frustrates the potential and holds back UK growth and potential.

With EEUK’s aim being to enable excellence within enterprise/entrepreneurship education, we welcome all proposals that remove barriers to staff and students innovating and creating UK businesses.

KCL: Women Entrepreneurs Retreat 

King’s Entrepreneurship Institute recently hosted its 5^th annual Women Entrepreneurs Retreat and for the first time invited other UK university colleagues and their communities to join us. Over 60+ women founders attended the 3-day jam-packed weekend exploring all aspects of building a venture. Bringing the King’s community together with educators and students from eight other UK universities was truly special. Read more about the top five things that made the 2023 King’s Women Entrepreneurs Retreat the best one yet! Read more.

Manchester: 2023 Eli and Britt Harari Graphene Enterprise Award Winners 

The annual Harari Award, in association with Nobel Laureate Professor Sir Andre Geim, helps to establish commercially viable new ventures, relating to graphene or other 2D materials, from University of Manchester students, post-doctoral researchers and recent graduates. The award is co-funded by the North American Foundation for The University of Manchester, through the support of University alumnus, Dr Eli Harari, and his wife Britt. First prize (£50,000): MouseAble – the first on-skin device for wireless cardiovascular monitoring of free-moving mice. Second prize (£20,000): Eye Venture – smart contact lens systems, delivering unobtrusive detection and monitoring of ocular and systemic diseases. Sustainability Award (£10,000): Aqua Catalysis – treatment of industrial wastewater.

‘The Anglia Ruskin University Start-up Podcast is here!
We are thrilled to announce that this August, the ARU Start-Up Podcast aired its first episode! The ARU Start-Up Podcast series will explore the challenging and thrilling world of enterprise and entrepreneurship. Each episode will bring thought-provoking insights, answers and stories focused on enterprise matters such as investment, resources, business development and much more! Our guests include well-seasoned entrepreneurs, current and graduate students passionate about becoming self-employed and professionals who are making an impact in their industry. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at startupsupport@aru.ac.uk.’