Creativity is not a luxury in today’s rapidly evolving world, it is essential to survive the working landscape. The ability to have a skillset that allows you to be able to pivot and be agile will be paramount, but how is that linked to creativity?

Creativity is a mindset; those who think like this are defined as lateral thinkers. You can learn this through entrepreneurship activities and processes; creatives and business owners process information in this way.

Lateral thinking—a term first coined by Edward de Bono in 1967- refers to a person’s capacity to address problems by imagining solutions that cannot be arrived at via deductive or logical means.

The ability to develop original answers to difficult questions. This is the essence of creativity, and all organisations benefit from it at times of change, when, by definition, traditional solutions are unlikely to get the desired result. Phil Lewis: Former Editor at Forbes.

Whether you’re launching a business, designing a new course, or reimagining how students engage with learning, creativity fuels innovation and opens doors for people from every background and discipline.

Creative minds tend to be energetic (but focused), playful (but disciplined), and realistic (but imaginative). Such traits seem like contradictions, but according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, it’s this exact contrast that helps inspire the most creative of minds.

Why Creative Paradoxes Matter: A Short Explanation of Csikszentmihalyi’s Theory.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the most influential psychologists of the last century, argued that highly creative people don’t fit neatly into personality categories. Instead, they embody dynamic contradictions—pairs of traits that seem opposite but work together to fuel original thinking.

Csikszentmihalyi observed that creative individuals often display dualities such as:

energetic and focused. Playful and disciplined. Imaginative and realistic. Independent and collaborative. These aren’t inconsistencies—they’re flexible cognitive strategies.

Creative people shift between modes depending on what the work demands.

At the intersection of entrepreneurship and higher education lies a powerful opportunity: to cultivate environments where curiosity thrives, ideas collide, and students feel empowered to participate fully, regardless of their subject area or starting point or background.

By introducing creativity as a learnable process rather than a talent, this could help students across all subjects feel included and capable. By showing examples of analytical, visual, collaborative, and experimental thinking to validate different ways of approaching problems.

Present, authentic challenges that invite multiple solutions, encouraging students to draw from their unique backgrounds and skillsets. Encourage iteration over perfection, so they feel safe to experiment. Reflect on their thought processes, helping them to recognise their creative strengths and growth areas.

These insights have implications: Curriculum design can encourage both experimentation and rigour. Interdisciplinary learning naturally cultivates paradoxical thinking. Innovation ecosystems (labs, incubators, maker spaces) thrive when students can transition between divergent and convergent thinking.

Assessment models that reward curiosity, iteration, and reflection help students develop these dual capacities. Therefore, we can intentionally create environments where these paradoxes aren’t just accepted—they’re leveraged.

Creative paradoxes help people enter flow because they balance: keeping the mind engaged without tipping into boredom or anxiety. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, speaks about this particularly within his theory of flow.

By embracing creativity as a shared practice rather than a niche skill, it transforms who feels welcome to participate and makes it more inclusive for all to explore, collaborate and generate new ideas. Building a sense of belonging that has no parameters, but that encourages inclusive student participation and engagement.

Conclusion: Creativity as a Shared Space for Everyone

In a world defined by rapid change, creativity is no longer a specialist skill — it is a universal capacity that helps people adapt, innovate, and thrive.

What makes this mindset so powerful is that it is learnable. When we understand creativity not as a rare talent but as a flexible way of thinking, we begin to see ourselves as capable contributors, regardless of our background or subject area.

Education has an opportunity to nurture this mindset. By presenting authentic challenges, encouraging experimentation, and validating diverse cognitive styles — analytical, visual, collaborative, or exploratory — educators can help students recognise their own creative strengths.

Environments that balance freedom with structure, challenge with skill, and novelty with clarity mirror the very paradoxes that fuel creative flow.

These conditions make learning more inclusive, giving everyone permission to explore, iterate, and imagine new solutions.

Cultivating communities where creativity becomes a shared practice rather than an exclusive domain.

Csikszentmihalyi’s work reminds us that nurturing creativity means nurturing complexity.

References

The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967) Edward de Bono, London: Jonathan Cape.

Phil Lewis: Former Editor at Forbes – Published Mar 20, 2020

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (1996)

Written by Jennie Baptiste, Industry & Engagement Manager at University of Westminster

Jennie has some of her creative photography work currently on show at The V&A East Museum’s inaugural exhibition, The Museum is Black: A British Story. Opens 18^th April- 3^rd January 2026.

Enterprise and entrepreneurship skills matter for every student and graduate, no matter where their career journey takes them. Having an enterprising mindset helps people spot opportunities, adapt quickly, and respond confidently to a fast‑changing labour market. It also plays an important role in wellbeing, resilience, and social mobility.

Across the sector, we’re seeing a welcome rise in careers services taking responsibility for enterprise and entrepreneurship education. With this shift comes an important question: How can we ensure careers professionals feel confident and supported to have enterprising conversations?

That’s where our work comes in……

Why we need entrepreneurial Careers Professionals

As graduates face increasingly complex career landscapes, agility and enterprising thinking are becoming essential. And these aren’t just skills for students, they’re equally important for the people who guide them.

Since 2018, I’ve been working with the Graduate Futures Institute (GFI) and Enterprise Educators UK (EEUK) to explore what entrepreneurial practice looks like within careers work. This has been through the work of an Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Task Group, with a group of exceptionally talented individuals from across the sector.  This has included primary research with careers professionals, which has been invaluable in shaping training and resources that genuinely meet their needs.

One interviewee summed it up perfectly:

“It’s important to become a more entrepreneurial careers adviser, because if you can practise the value of an entrepreneurial mindset in a profession you are familiar, qualified in and comfortable with, then you start to see how you can help others.”

That insight continues to guide our approach today.

Expanding our reach: partnering with the Careers Development Institute (CDI)

Until recently, much of our insight has come from Higher Education careers teams. To broaden the reach of our work, I reached out to the Careers Development Institute (CDI), a diverse community of career advisers, coaches, managers, researchers, in schools, colleges, universities and training providers across the UK and internationally.

I was especially keen to explore how we could collaborate to strengthen enterprise and entrepreneurship support across the wider careers development sector.  So, I’m delighted to share that earlier this month, Dr Matthew Draycott and I were invited by their Senior Professional Development & Standards Manager, Oliver Jenkins, to deliver our first joint workshop with CDI. The session was hands‑on, practical, and designed to help careers professionals feel confident, informed, and ready to bring enterprising thinking into their everyday conversations.

In the workshop, we explored how to:

• Understand the core skills behind enterprise and entrepreneurship
• Recognise where these skills show up in real‑world contexts
• Support clients to reflect on their strengths and opportunities
• Build a tailored Resource Matrix to connect learners to networks and next steps

Colleagues took part in discussions, used practical tools, and shared examples from their own work. Whether participants were new to enterprise or looking to refresh their approach, the session aimed to create a supportive space to learn and experiment.

I’m excited to see how this collaboration with CDI evolves over the year and will continue to share updates as and when things develop.

What else is coming up this year?

Outputs from our two Jisc‑funded research projects

I am excited to share our task group have secured two consecutive rounds of Jisc funding, supporting deeper exploration into enterprise, entrepreneurship, and careers work.

• 2025 Project: Student perspectives on enterprise, entrepreneurship and employability
  Read more here: Student perspectives on enterprise, entrepreneurship and employability | Luminate
• 2026 Project: Empowering Careers Professionals in Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
  This study focuses on professionals who self‑identify as having low confidence in enterprise and entrepreneurship. We are working with a panel to understand their needs and will create a suite of digital resources to support their development.

These insights will play a key role in shaping future training and support across the sector.

The launch of our EEUK and GFI Special Interest Group and Community of Practice

We’re also launching a new collaborative group between Enterprise Educators UK and the Graduate Futures Institute. This will be announced at:

• The Graduate Futures Institute Conference in July
• IEEC (Enterprise Educators UK Conference) in September

This group will offer opportunities for shared learning, cross‑membership events, and collaborative projects. If you’re interested in getting involved, I’d love to hear from you.

Looking ahead to the future…

Enterprise and entrepreneurship education continues to evolve and so does our work. I’m looking forward to deepening our partnerships, expanding our research, and supporting more careers professionals to feel confident in this space.

Thank you for reading….more updates coming soon!

EEUK Director’s Blog | February 2026

During my most recent GETM4 project research secondment, a brilliant professor made the statement, “context is everything”, which resonated with me well beyond the workshop discussion. The context of that conversation was meaningful in and of itself but has propelled my thinking across the many contexts we traverse in our careers and has helped me to organise some of the reflections I wish to share this month.

I’ll organise these as follows: first, I want to reflect on our temporal context in enterprise education in the UK, indicating some of the realities of our place in time. Secondly, I’ll turn to the global context of our work and reflect upon opportunities to engage with and learn from our global networks. Finally, I’ll highlight the potential for all of us to engage in and enhance our local contexts — including an update on my beloved northeast, our network and our plans to form a regional SIG (Special Interest Group) with EEUK.

1. Temporal Context: taking action in the eye of the storm

As we welcome the lunar new year and transition into the Year of the Fire Horse, we are told this year may bring illumination and movement — it is forward-looking, energetic, and instinct-driven towards new beginnings. I think there is plenty to take stock of — even hope for — here in enterprise education and in the wider FE and HE sector.  Taking action is something I think we enterprise educators are good at (probably one of our defining features) and considering the continuing ramifications of financial pressures in the sector right now, there is much we can channel from this forward-thinking energy.

Our temporal context is dynamic, complex and interwoven in shifting political and ecological – and now more than ever, emergent threats caused by mass digitisation in many parts of the world.  The polycrisis impacting us all has profound implications for enterprise education (see fellow Board member, Catherine Brentnall’s teams Special Issue Call for Papers around this!) and what we can do about this in our own practise is compelling.  Temporally our context is fraught with competing demands and polycrises and now, more than ever, I think, we need to collectivise and collaborate for survival.

For instance, one of the projects I have been working on recently with my brilliant colleague and co-author, Dr Aldo Valencia, is around the concept of ‘cyborg epistemology’ (Valencia & Mountford-Brown, 2025), as a response to- and departure from ‘cyber-epistemology’ that we are seeing too much of within our classrooms. Epistemology in simple terms, refers to how we know what we know.  Whilst ‘cyber-epistemology’ refers to the unproblematised ‘download’ of information curated by tech companies and their algorithms as ‘knowledge’; ‘cyborg’ as an alternative, refers to an intentional engagement with AI (creatively and critically) with tactile and multimodal learning practices that enhance reflection, criticality and imagination with futures literacy.  In this temporal context, in the digital age, it is not just about what we know but how we know what we know; and taking the time to engage in meta-cognition is crucial for enterprise education and entrepreneurial futures.

Thanks to the GETM4 project we participate in, we are generating and collecting significant international data to help us develop these ideas further, and importantly, develop tools to benefit us all as educators and lifelong learners.

2. Our Global Context: Learning from ‘Not-So-Obvious’

My director’s blogs seem to follow a pattern of reflecting on recent research trips with the GETM4 project — not intentional but perhaps telling of how profoundly these experiences shape my thinking! I am acutely aware that participating in international secondments is an utter privilege, particularly amidst the current pressures facing our sector. The context and pause for reflection these trips provoke is worth sharing — not as a gratuitous “look what I did”, but as a reminder that experiencing radically different contexts can help us better appreciate the privileges we so easily overlook, and that doing things differently makes a difference.

The GETM4 programme is based on staff exchange research secondments between nine different participating countries. It is a great example of how emphasising the power of social and cultural capital to gain contextual insights and ideas can have profound impacts. Our most recent secondment took place in Nairobi, Kenya. If anyone reading this has had the privilege of visiting, you may agree that the breadth of entrepreneurialism there is unmistakeable and substantial — in every direction. The sounds and the sights and energy of Nairobi and above all, its people, are vibrant and intoxicatingly friendly and positive; and whilst the hard-work, drive and hustle is palpable, so too is respect and coopetition.  Innovation is everywhere and we were lucky to be shown so many examples external to- and within Kenyatta University, of people doing incredibly entrepreneurial things, with sustainability and learning from nature and the natural environment being core themes.

I met passionate educators who were drawing on the experiences and challenges of local communities and creating rich, visceral learning experiences with the students they engaged.  I talked with educators about some of the challenges they experience with attention, engagement and access, with developing curriculum with key stakeholders.  Despite such differences in context – and the context is everything – we share so many similar types of challenges with bureaucracy and competing priorities in key stakeholders and authorities.

One of the key GETM4 work packages centres around “Respectful Translation”. Initially premised on the necessity to respectfully translate knowledge between the global north and south, this concept has since been updated to represent the valuing of insights from diverse contexts — particularly “not-so-obvious areas”. The principle is not only about ensuring proper credit and utilisation for all stakeholders involved in developing such insights; it is also a broader call to challenge stereotypes and to practise contextual understanding.

I think the key to getting better at practising contextual understanding is for us to get better at sharing and collaborating. We can strengthen awareness and knowledge from our global partnerships and find ways to enhance our ways of working and understanding the complexities of our worlds.

So, what about you, our EEUK network? We know there are various institutions doing great things in Europe and around the world – participating in various international consortium projects – we would love to hear from you! Too often, we are realising, there are great outputs/outcomes being produced in these projects and not enough noise and/or knowledge about them.

We are keen to not just praise and extend the work you’re already doing – we can also look at ways of working together in discrete projects as partners.  For instance, EEUK can participate in relevant consortiums for (UK/European) funded projects or help you to maximise the impact of your existing work of this nature. If you’re in interested in exploring this more, please contact: Steve@enterprise.ac.uk

I am also happy to share that I met up with the President of Enterprise Educators East Africa during this trip, and I hope to report back soon on how we might be able to work together and learn from each other soon.

 

3. Local Context: Building Communities – COPs and SIGs

In the northeast of England, we are quite lucky to have a strong and active regional network. Perhaps like some of you in the wider UK network, many of us have worked together at some point given limited regional mobility (often shaped by family ties and commitments) and have formed many point of connection and long-lasting friendships along the way. We have been meeting almost quarterly for a few years now, developing our own Community of Practice — inspired by a great enterprise exchange event at UCL several years ago — and taking turns to host at different universities across the network (Sunderland, Newcastle, Durham, and Northumbria so far, with potentially more to come!). So, the network grows, with newcomers – including academics and practitioners as well as what we at EEUK refer to as ‘Influencers’ but who occupy various types of (senior) management roles.  We may share some regional similarities, but we have different institutional drivers and priorities, different institutional ambitions and staff pressures, not to mention different responses to financial pressures on the sector.  In short, we always have much to learn from each other’s context and meeting regularly helps us to discuss and tackle some of the issues affecting us all.

Like many of you in the UK network, we are now working within a combined authority, and our new regional SIG will enable us to collectivise around specific regional issues and policy agendas. We are excited about what this might achieve, and warmly invite anyone interested in regional collaboration and forming your own SIG to get in touch with EEUK.

Full disclosure, I spent an uncomfortable amount of time trying to work with AI Tools to produce a UK Regional map, to include in this blog post.   I did not have success in developing anything that resembled accuracy unfortunately (we even lost the northwest to Ireland at once point!) so, for now, you just have a list to observe.   As we know, there are 4 constituent nations that make up our beloved United Kingdom and ONS tends to break down England into 9 distinct regions including:

1. Northeast

2. Northwest

3. Yorkshire and the Humber

4. East Midlands,

5. West midlands

6. East of England

7. Southeast

8. Southwest

9. Greater London

 

Groups within Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland may also find value in differentiating regions (for example, west and east Scotland/north and south Wales) – there is nothing set in stone here – we are interested to understand what sort of ‘special interests’ each of our communities are concerned with and provoking space to tackle these and ride the waves of the storms ahead together.

Want to start a Regional SIG? Get in touch.

Closing Thoughts: Context is everything.

Context is a slippery notion that is often best articulated and understood through practice (Bate, 2014). As Goulder (1955) – who was apparently the first to coin the phrase ‘context is everything’ notes, ‘human action can be rendered meaningful only by relating it to the contexts in which it takes place’. However, too often we assume similarities and sameness from sharing the same ‘context’ — be that disciplinary, institutional, local, or regional.  The sheer complexity of contexts in this digital age demands that we remain thoughtful and recursive in how we read and respond to our environments.

Context helps us to understand not only where we are, but where we might be going. Whether we are navigating the temporal pressures of a sector in flux, drawing inspiration from entrepreneurial ecosystems far from home, or investing in the communities right on our doorstep, context shapes all of it. I hope these reflections offer something useful — whether as a prompt for your own thinking, a nudge to connect regionally, or simply a reminder that the spaces we occupy, however different, hold rich possibility.

Take action.

References

Bate, P. et al. (2014) Perspectives on context: a selection of essays considering the role of context in successful quality improvement. London: The Health Foundation.

Gouldner, A. (1955) Wildcat Strike: A Study in Worker–Management Relationships. London: Routledge.

Valencia, A., & Mountford-Brown, V. (2025) Rethinking cyber- and cyborg-knowledge for entrepreneurial futures and entrepreneurship education. Paper presented at the 48th Annual International Conference of the Institute for Small Business & Entrepreneurship (ISBE 2025), University of Glasgow & University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom

***

Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 4 (GETM4) is an international, interdisciplinary research and innovation staff exchange project funded by Horizon Europe’s Marie-Sklodowska-Actions, UKRI, the Polish Science and Higher Education Ministry and the Korean National Research Foundation.

Higher education is facing one of the most complex and demanding periods in its history. Long viewed as a relatively stable pillar of society, universities are now operating in an environment shaped by geopolitical uncertainty, rapid technological change, shifting labour markets, and growing pressure to demonstrate relevance and impact. These challenges are not abstract; they shape funding models, student mobility, curriculum design, and the very purpose of higher education itself.

For those of us working in enterprise and entrepreneurship education, this moment presents both a challenge and an opportunity. If we genuinely believe in creativity, adaptability, and entrepreneurial problem-solving, then now is the time to practice what we preach. The way we teach, design learning experiences, and engage with students must reflect the realities of the world they are entering.

The global context in which higher education operates has fundamentally changed. Increasing geopolitical tensions, regional conflicts, trade fragmentation, and shifts towards protectionism have disrupted long-established patterns of international collaboration. Student mobility, once a cornerstone of global higher education, is increasingly affected by visa policies, border controls, economic instability, and concerns about safety and inclusion.

At the same time, universities are being drawn into wider political debates around academic freedom, research security, and national competitiveness. Knowledge is no longer seen as neutral; it is strategic. Governments want universities to contribute directly to economic resilience, innovation capacity, and workforce development, often while simultaneously reducing public funding and increasing regulatory oversight.

This creates a difficult balancing act. Higher education institutions are expected to be global in outlook but local in impact, collaborative yet competitive, and socially responsible while remaining financially sustainable. These tensions shape every aspect of university life, from research partnerships to course portfolios.

The traditional higher education model is under strain. Rising costs, questions about the value of degrees, and the growth of alternative education providers have forced universities to justify what makes them distinctive. Students are increasingly discerning consumers, seeking clear pathways to employment, purpose, and impact rather than abstract promises of future opportunity.

At the same time, the pace of change in the world of work is accelerating. Automation, artificial intelligence, and green transitions are reshaping industries faster than curricula can traditionally respond. Employers consistently emphasise the need for graduates who can navigate uncertainty, work across cultures, think creatively, and solve complex, real-world problems.

These are not new messages, but the urgency has increased. Higher education can no longer rely on incremental change or cosmetic innovation. The challenge is systemic and demands a fundamental rethink of how learning is designed and delivered.

Enterprise and entrepreneurship education sits at the heart of this challenge. Our field is often positioned as the bridge between education and the real world, between theory and practice. We talk about resilience, opportunity recognition, experimentation, and value creation in uncertain environments. In a volatile geopolitical context, these capabilities are not optional extras; they are essential graduate attributes.

However, there is a risk of contradiction. Too often, enterprise education is delivered within rigid institutional structures that mirror the very systems we encourage students to question. Assessment regimes, timetabling constraints, risk-averse cultures, and siloed disciplines can limit our ability to model entrepreneurial thinking in practice.

If we are not careful, we end up teaching entrepreneurship as content rather than as a way of thinking and acting. In a world defined by ambiguity and rapid change, that is no longer sufficient.

To respond effectively, enterprise educators must embody the mindset we seek to develop in our students. This means being willing to challenge assumptions about teaching, learning, and institutional norms. It means seeing constraints not only as barriers but as design challenges.

Practising what we preach starts with curriculum design. Are our learning experiences flexible enough to respond to global events as they unfold? Do they encourage students to engage with real geopolitical, social, and economic challenges rather than simulated or overly simplified problems? Are students given space to experiment, fail, reflect, and adapt?

It also requires us to rethink our role as educators. In complex and uncertain contexts, the educator is less a transmitter of knowledge and more a facilitator, connector, and co-learner. This shift can feel uncomfortable, particularly in institutions that value control and predictability, but it is essential if learning is to remain relevant.

One of the most powerful lessons from entrepreneurship is that innovation often emerges under constraint. Limited resources, regulatory complexity, and uncertainty are not reasons to retreat; they are catalysts for creative problem-solving. Higher education today is full of such constraints, from funding pressures to policy shifts and geopolitical disruptions.

Enterprise educators are uniquely positioned to respond creatively. This might involve developing interdisciplinary projects that bring together students from different cultural and academic backgrounds to work on global challenges. It could mean partnering with external organisations, communities, and entrepreneurs to create authentic learning experiences that transcend national borders.

Digital and hybrid learning models also offer opportunities to reimagine internationalisation in a more inclusive and sustainable way. Rather than relying solely on physical mobility, we can design global classrooms where students collaborate across countries and time zones, learning to navigate cultural difference and geopolitical complexity in practice.

Ultimately, the challenges facing higher education are not just pedagogical; they are cultural and strategic. Enterprise educators must step into leadership roles, advocating for experimentation, flexibility, and learner-centred design within their institutions. This requires confidence, evidence, and a willingness to engage with uncertainty rather than shy away from it.

In a changing geopolitical world, higher education has a critical role to play in shaping informed, ethical, and adaptable citizens. Enterprise education, when done well, equips learners not just to survive change but to shape it. But this promise will only be realised if we are prepared to live our values as educators.

The question, then, is not whether higher education needs to change. It already is. The real question is whether we, as enterprise educators, are willing to be entrepreneurial ourselves – to experiment boldly, respond creatively, and lead by example in the face of uncertainty. If we are, we can help ensure that higher education remains not only relevant, but transformative, in a rapidly changing world.

As we approach the end of another energetic, imaginative and occasionally chaotic year in enterprise and entrepreneurship education, Christmas finally gives us permission to pause, breathe, and, just for a moment, stop working! The festive season reminds us of the importance of connection, and connection is something enterprise educators excel at… usually without needing mince pies as an incentive (though they certainly help).

Throughout the year, colleagues across the UK have been busy crafting innovative learning experiences, hosting hackathons fuelled by caffeine and hope, and guiding students through the highs and lows of entrepreneurial discovery. From pitch events that finish with applause to workshops that finish with students asking, “Do we really need a business model?”, enterprise educators continue to bring creativity and opportunity to life. Christmas offers us a well-earned moment to acknowledge this brilliance.

This time of year is also about generosity, something the EEUK community masters better than Father Christmas himself. Our networks flourish because educators openly share tools, ideas and hard-won lessons. Whether you’re one of the 295 that attended one of our 8 Enterprise Exchange events, or one of the 45 that presented at IEEC 2025, your generosity of time and spirit is what strengthens our community. No sleigh required, just a willingness to help.

Of course, Christmas is not only for reflection; it’s also a springboard into the new year. And if there’s one thing enterprise and entrepreneurship educators understand, it’s opportunity. Whether navigating the rise of AI, evolving student expectations, or policy changes that appear overnight (and sometimes feel like they were written by elves), we continue to adapt with humour, resilience, and a healthy amount of creativity.

As 2026 approaches, at EEUK we hope your festive break brings rest, joy, and perhaps only light email checking. Thank you for the passion, kindness, and energy you contribute to EEUK and to the students and communities you inspire.  From all of us at EEUK, we wish you a joyful, sparkling Christmas and an enterprising start to the new year, may it be full of creativity, collaboration, and only the good kind of surprises.

Dr Emily Beaumont
Associate Professor of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, University of Gloucestershire
EEUK Director

As an eager Arts Foundation student back in 1985, I sat in the new TV and Video Editing suite at Cumbria College of Art and Design (now University of Cumbria) watching coloured pixels slowly building my portrait line by line on a screen. Perhaps I can claim it as an early selfie? It certainly seemed like some strange magic, my first taste of digital innovation. That moment from forty years ago stayed with me and influenced the choices I made later.

When I arrived at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University – NTU) in 1986 to study Fine Art, I chose it because it embraced multimedia, a bold move back then. Today, NTU’s Design and Digital Arts (DADA) building is packed with technology I could not have even imagined.

My next encounter with computer innovations was through Chris, my early adopter brother-in-law who went above and beyond, typing my words into an early Amstrad word processing machine as I dictated my Fine Art dissertation from my handwritten pages. He had a dot matrix printer, which was still churning out the continuous sprocket paper up until the time of the last train from Bristol Temple Meads back to Nottingham.

Despite the arduous task of separating each the sheet and tearing the perforations down the sides of each page, my finished document entitled “Female Sexuality and Biology: Fact, Fictions and Social Suppression / Oppression” made it to hand in two days later March 10, 1989.  I could write a whole other blog about how the pace of change for women hasn’t been quite so fast as for digital technology. The reason why creating the NTU Enterprise Female Founders Club supporting women in business matters so much to me. But back to the thread of my story.

I did not have access to employability or enterprise education at university in the 1980s, support which we now take for granted. When I graduated, I wanted to make a living from creativity but had little clue about business as a creative and had few role models. I tried a few things around the edges, before a “side hustle” was a thing, designing and making cards and prints for friends and family and creating a few commissions.

As an unemployed graduate, I signed up for a Chamber of Commerce course which gave me a grasp of basic trading concepts, and I wrote a pretty implausible business plan. That got me access to the government’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme: £40 a week to support early trading, if I registered as a sole trader and put £1,000 into my business (I borrowed this).

Digital print did not exist, offset lythography colour card printing needed big chunks of capital I did not have. I knew I needed to up my production for the numbers to add up so my saviour was colour laser copying. I was printing sheets of designs, hand-cutting and assembling elements myself!

However I soon realised I was not great at being a starving artist alone in a garret. I love food and people too much, so I pivoted to sharing my skills through workshops and later became an educator. My career and my creativity thrives on connecting and supporting others. I subsequently worked in museums and galleries and arts development before joining my alma mater NTU as an Enterprise Advisor on a programme called Enabling Innovation.

The Pace of Change

When I started my first business in 1990, I had no internet for research or marketing. Public Internet launched in 1991 and I encountered my first dial-up connection with a home PC sometime later, I can still hear the screeches and beeps as I write! Searching was through Ask Jeeves, arguably ahead of its time as a more relation style of search engine with a friendly butler character (The ChatGPT of its time!) eventually overpowered by Google.

Resources for creative entrepreneurs were scarce. Books like Pete Mosley’s Make Your Creativity Pay and T-Shirts and Suits by David Parrish came much later, texts I wish I had had (and written) earlier. I navigated change with gaps I now strive to fill for others. I ran my business for over twenty years, learning that adaptability is everything and making plenty of pivots along the way.

What Does this Mean for Us?

The Internet, digital tools and AI have changed everything. So, what is our role as enterprise educators now? How are we staying relevant? We cannot compete with the internet for information, but we can curate what matters and make it digestible. We can build confidence, helping our learners turn ideas into action. We can create spaces for collaboration, combating human homogenisation and creating places where diverse thinking thrives.

We also need to ask ourselves some tough questions. How do we design learning that feels relevant when knowledge is everywhere? How do we help students and graduates develop judgement, resilience, and creativity in a world where technology is moving faster than policy or ethics? These are the human questions that matter and I can’t find answers by running them through an AI.

So tell me what you are doing about it?

• Why are you in enterprise education?
• How are you designing innovative learning experiences for enterprise education?
• What are you learning from your students, graduates and colleagues?
• Where are you co-creating?
• How are you building confidence, creativity and connection?
• Where is innovation in your ecosystem?
• How are you supporting your team to thrive in this ever-changing environment?

I am delighted that Nottingham Business School here at NTU will host the 20th International Enterprise Educators Conference in 2026. I look forward to welcoming you to Nottingham, a city known for creativity, digital innovation and radical thinking.

The call for submissions to the conference will be coming soon. Be prepared to share your explorations in enterprise education. We may not have all the answers, yet, but our challenge is our opportunity to use our human skills together for the evolution of enterprise education.

 

After more than a decade of shaping enterprise education at Lancaster University and across the wider sector, Simon is stepping away from his role at Work in Progress, and into a bold new chapter with his wife, Charlotte, and their young family in France.

Both Simon and Charlotte have long been familiar faces in our community. Charlotte was among the first to complete the International Enterprise Educators Programme (NCEE), while Simon has been an influential presence in the EntreComp community and EEUK best practice events including  IEEC (who could forget PechaKucha Poetry?). Together and individually, they’ve embodied the spirit of collaboration, curiosity, and creativity that drives our sector.

At Lancaster, Simon leaves behind a legacy of innovation. From championing the Business Model Canvas to co-creating Ideas Labs, Innovation Fellowships, Startup Validation Programmes and ECHO (the Entrepreneurial Competency Heutogogical Organiser), he reimagined how enterprise education could look for all, through experimentation, creativity, and playfulness.

He also secured EEUK funding for several projects, including Black Swan, the intellectual property board game that brings play and creativity to one of the most challenging aspects of enterprise learning. Simon built a home for entrepreneurial learning at Lancaster; a community space where ideas grow, people thrive, and authentic learning by doing is celebrated.

Now, in true ‘walking the walk’ style, Simon and Charlotte are venturing into their own entrepreneurial project – establishing a sustainable flower farm in central France.

As one of my mentors often says when things are unfolding, ‘just keep doing the work’. We cannot wait to see what this chapter brings for Simon, Charlotte, and their family as their ideas and work take root.

We encourage colleagues to connect with them on LinkedIn to follow their journey; and who knows, perhaps, in the future, we will see Simon step into to shaping enterprise education in Europe, grounded in hands on entrepreneurial, sustainable, and very authentic learning by doing.

Amanda Brooks & the Work in Progress Team, Lancaster University

 

There’s something rather special about IEEC. Each year, enterprise and entrepreneurship educators gather together and suddenly, ideas start flying, collaborations spark, and the energy in the room feels a bit like someone’s just plugged the conference into the National Grid. But what really sets it apart is not just the buzz in the moment, it’s the way IEEC nurtures the community to look forward, grow stronger, and build better futures for our students and founders.

This year’s conference, IEEC2025, was no exception. If anything, it may have raised the bar yet again. Delegates described it as “inspiring”, “energising” and “the best IEEC yet.” Those words don’t just give you the warm fuzzies (though they certainly help soften the thought of the looming academic year). They remind us that this gathering is more than a conference: it’s a space that cultivates openness, learning and growth.

Claudia Filsinger from Creo Incubator captured this perfectly: “I’m really impressed by the collaboration, the sharing, the openness, and the future focus. Everyone is really thinking about how we can best support students and founders moving forward.”

That nurturing and future focus is what keeps IEEC so fresh. It’s not about self-congratulation, though there’s plenty to celebrate, but about turning to face the future and asking the big questions: how do we create truly inclusive enterprise education? How do we equip students for opportunities that don’t yet exist? And how do we nurture ecosystems where universities, businesses and communities work hand in hand?

Of course, nurturing doesn’t mean things are slow and gentle. IEEC is also about sparks and the lightning sessions brought exactly that. Asif Majid from Sheffield Hallam University summed it up: “Some of the sessions, particularly the lightning ones, were absolutely amazing… we learned so much from each other.” These rapid-fire exchanges are proof that short, sharp bursts of energy can also help us grow.

So, as #IEEC2025 draws to a close, what’s the verdict? The packed notebooks, LinkedIn love and smiling delegates say it all: IEEC continues to be a place where collaboration is nurtured, openness is celebrated, and the future is embraced with both optimism and determination. Until next year — keep nurturing, keep sharing, and perhaps start plotting your lightning talk now.

Dr Emily Beaumont
Associate Professor of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
Head of REF
Past President of Enterprise Educators UK
Vice President (Education and Practitioner Learning) of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Last month I was invited to join the EEUK Board of Directors to support a new MOU partnership with AGCAS, two memberships organisations which both hold a special place in my heart. I have spent 24 years working in Higher Education, 15 of those as a careers professional at University College Birmingham (our newest EEUK member), doing everything from providing information, advice and guidance to students, delivering workshops, helping with start-up queries and supporting employer events.  I then moved to Careers Network at the University of Birmingham in 2016, to my current role of Enterprise Educator, which is more academic facing, focused on embedding credit bearing, contextualised, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education into our degree programmes.  Two very different roles, but sharing the same purpose, supporting our students to be future ready, lifelong learners, developing the skills, competencies and behaviours for both employment and self-employment.

Bridging the Gap

Throughout my career I have accessed support and guidance from both membership organisations, but something I noticed was a gap when it came to accessibility of bespoke enterprise and entrepreneurship support for careers professionals.  So, when an opportunity came available to join the AGCAS Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Task Group, I applied and began working with an amazing group of individuals to work on bridging this gap together. Going onto to become Task Group Chair, we then began working closely with EEUK on several exciting projects, and so I’d like to give a big shout out to Gareth Trainer and Alison Price on getting those initial wheels in motion.  From that point, the relationship has gone from strength to strength, and through the collective efforts and support of many colleagues, we have reached the point of having an MOU in place.

This is an exciting time for members, this partnership brings the breadth and depth of knowledge and expertise across two organisations, something we celebrated and launched at the AGCAS Conference last month with CollabQuest.  To kick start our MOU we wanted our members to ‘experience’ positive, impactful collaboration as a route to help address shared sector challenges through the development of entrepreneurial competencies – rather than being told about the benefits of our collaboration we wanted them to experience it through interactive and experiential conference activities.  We all had a lot of fun (as you can see from the photos), it was great to speak with so many colleagues from across the sector about our collaboration, the current projects underway and ideas for the future.

The importance of community

Our networks play an important part in shaping how we develop professionally, so taking time engage with these and our colleagues is essential not only for continued professional development, but also for our well-being.  I can sometimes feel overwhelmed and struggle with imposter syndrome. When I find myself asking, “Helen, why are you putting yourself forward for things that make you feel overwhelmed and slightly terrified?” the answer is simple, I am surrounded and encouraged by such kind and brilliant colleagues and friends, both at work and through my AGCAS and EEUK communities.

What’s coming up next and how can you get involved?

We will be taking Collab Quest to the International Enterprise Education Conference (IEEC) in September!

Here AGCAS and EEUK will be delivering a Spotlight workshop on the 11^th September, in collaboration with Margaret Ochieng from Inclusive Village on the topic of Fostering an Inclusive Academic Environment.  This will be an interactive workshop format to provide time and space for meaningful discussions. We hope to see you there!

AGCAS & EEUK Jisc funded project on Empowering Careers Professionals in Enterprise and Entrepreneurship: A Training Resource Development Project

This project will provide you with an opportunity to help shape the future of enterprise and entrepreneurship training for careers and employability professionals.  A survey will be launching shortly, so please keep your eyes peeled so that you can include your response.

A brand-new Special Interest Group (SIG) for Careers & Employability Professionals

I will be launching this new EEUK SIG, joined up with the Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Task Group I currently chair for AGCAS.  Supporting the MOU we have, our joined-up SIG will focus on providing members with a range of activities, events and CPD opportunities.  If you have any specific thoughts and ideas on what you’d like to see, drop me a message!

Book contract with Elgar Publishing – ‘Enterprise and Entrepreneurship for Careers Professionals: How to develop Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education in a university setting’

Dr Emily Beaumont and I are editing a book together which is due out next year.  We are currently looking for vignette case studies to include within each chapter, so please do take a look and consider sending me an EOI.  More details can be found here: Call for Vignette Contributions – Enterprise Educators UK

EUniWell cocreation workshop in collaboration with Enactus

EUniWell unites eleven universities from eleven European regions in a cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary, knowledge-based perspective. Through a variety of outputs and activities, our alliance aims to inform decision- making, underpin education, training and skills development to have a measurable impact on European citizens’ well-being and quality of life.  I am currently exploring ways to bring EEUK into some of our alliance activities, one example being an upcoming cocreation workshop I am hosting at University of Birmingham.  This workshop is being co-designed and co-delivered with several colleagues, and good friends of mine from across the alliance this September.  If you have any questions, or want to find out more information, please see this link: EUniWell Co-Creation Workshop: Driving Engagement Beyond Borders

Final reflection

The above projects would not be happening without community and collaboration, and without the networks and friendships built from across the sector and within the membership organisations I am part of.  I feel lucky to be part of such forward thinking, innovative, friendly and inclusive networks, and I hope through reading this blog, some of these sentiments resonate with you as well.  Through unity and community, some of the best ideas and collaborations can happen.  So, if you have any reflections and ideas connected to the opportunities above, or new collaborative ideas that you would like to socialise, please do get in touch.

Anyone else ready for a break?!  Those in student-facing roles may be starting the wind-down for summer (although I suspect I am far from alone in noticing that magical summer ‘break’ and ‘winding-down’ time seems to get shorter every year) where often we find ourselves completing Exam Boards and looking to the near future of semester 1 starting again in just a few short months. Undergraduates disappear for the summer, the university spaces change, and we realise that all the projects we had imagined would all be tackled and completed ‘in the summer’ have an actual window of a few weeks. The cycles of academia, folks!

I recently had a conversation with a brilliant PhD student who expressed her concern for the state of academia in the UK right now saying, “I didn’t realise how bad it was!” – as someone with a successful professional career outside of academia, they were speaking about how from the outside looking in, the pressures and challenges placed on the way we work in academia, are not too obvious – until you have the view from within.   The torrent of budget-cuts and voluntary redundancies, funding stripping and in some rather painful cases, outright removal of enterprise and employability roles in many UK institutions (despite most institutional strategies centralising employability, enterprise and innovation) presents an uncertain and shifting landscape in higher education currently.  This is why I feel compelled to ruminate in this month’s Director’s blog and consider how we might try and do things differently…

What I mean when with ‘doing things differently makes a difference’ is multilayered.  It is the Mantra of the GETM4 project, wherein Entrepreneurship is more understood broadly as doing things differently to the norm, rather than solely tied to venture creation.  I want to give some space to some of the excellent activities going on in the project to share emergent insights around the potential for transformative action and working together across boundaries.  For the purposes of this blog (and my own perspective) however, I think the phrase extends beyond the incredible work in GETM4 and helps us unpack other things we are working on in EEUK.  For instance, what I know from my own experience is higher education is full of boundaries.  To be entrepreneurial in academia, I think this refers to working across (real or perceived) boundaries within and beyond higher education (HE), to enhance or create value.  The shifting landscape we work within places significant challenges on this.   As an enterprise educator having worked in the context of professional services and as an academic, I can appreciate some of the different challenges each type of role brings (there are quite a few of us on the EEUK board with similar experience – and some, all 3 of the EEUK role types) – but I also understand some of the different perceptions from each ‘camp’ that can perpetuate boundaries.  This, for me, underpins the imperative to do things differently, to work across and beyond (real or imagined) boundaries for our own sakes and importantly, for future generations.

GETM4: Doing Things Differently Makes a Difference

Just last month, I attended our Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 4 (GETM4) research secondment in Warsaw, Poland.  The secondment provided yet another enriching experience in every sense and whilst I have commented on GETM4 project experiences in a previous blog, let me provide a little context to remind you.   Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 4 (GETM4) is an international, interdisciplinary research and innovation project funded by the EU’s Horizon, UKRO, Polish Education Ministry, the South Korean Education Ministry and Korean National Research Foundation.  The premise of the project is Physical and Mental Wellbeing in a Disrupted World via Entrepreneurial Action Underpinned by Responsible Digital Innovation. The project is structured around traversing the boundaries around 4 key dimensions, making it Transnational, Trans-sectorial, Transgenerational and Transdisciplinary, engaging subjects such as business & management, law, information systems, computer science, political science, education, sociology, psychology, and economics.  The project harnesses a community of participants from 18 universities and industry bodies from Africa, Asia, Europe and South America with the Mission “to make a difference by collaborating across boundaries in a welcoming international team”.   In the image below, for instance, this photo from the Warsaw Sandpit Mid Term Review represents just a fraction of attendees at one of the biggest sandpits in the project yet – and includes project members from partner (non-academic) organisations, PhD students, early career-, mid-career-, and senior academics and HE professionals from across the globe. The image therefore represents a rich diversity of contributors to what was rather successfully, declared “the best mid-term review ever” and which warrants, I think some space to what the project is developing, early achievements and future project scope.

Figure 1: GETM4 Warsaw Sandpit Mid Term Review

One of our key work packages focuses on understanding Entrepreneurs as they navigate times of disruption and digitalisation, has so far amassed a collection of over 70 qualitative interviews from global locations (so far, Poland, UK, Ireland, Slovenia and South Korea – Estonia, Macedonia and Kenya will follow to complete the full dataset), which is a significant research project for contributors.  The project seeks to develop a handbook from this for entrepreneurs and educators to use – there are some fascinating case study examples emerging also – watch this space, as there will be plenty of useful resources generated from this work, that the EEUK community will be able to access! By utilising secondments and sandpits to engage in data collection, the project can generate insights from participants from across the globe but also provides the opportunity for those in earlier stages of their careers, to be part of an international team of researchers generating international data.  These sorts of project collaborations would typically take years to achieve and offer potential to be part of teams publishing from the data.  For those of you working in research and academic roles, you will understand how important this is in terms of meeting our metrics (more on this shortly!) and therefore the design of the GETM4 project offers such opportunities to professionals across the career stages, to work and learn from each other. Constructing the project in this way – and doing things differently, makes a difference.

Figure 2: GETM4 Strong Female Leadership – Kasia, Alison, Nada (from left-to-right)

One of the indisputable reasons why the project is so successful – in its design, development and delivery – is the leadership behind the project and the overall concern with equality, diversity, accessibility and inclusion. Pictured here are three central leads in the project team who have been instrumental in nurturing the project and its people, and core concepts  of Social and Cultural Capital that the project is constructed around, ensures that engaging with and learning from each other’s context and perspective are core to GETM4; one of the core work packages around Respectful Translation also ensures we learn from and consider the value of  insights from ‘not-so-obvious areas’.   Gender is also a key metric that is being monitored by the project so that accessibility to things like overseas research secondments can be equally accessed.  Often, travel is not possible without bringing family, and the support, kindness and flexibility that the project leadership and secondment opportunities offer, enhances the chance to take part.  Rather than such issues being in the background of international projects, GETM4 makes them of central concern – we talk, we share, we try new approaches to find what works.

Figure 3: GETM4 Warsaw collaborative sandpit activities in action

Of particular interest to the EEUK readership, I suspect, is one of the other core work packages within GETM4 on Innovations in HE curriculum to enhance ‘creative confidence’ and ‘entrepreneurial agency’.  This work package recently developed a report that showcases such innovations from project institutions and therefore a culmination of best practice from around the world.  We will be sharing some of these insights with the sector soon also – we have a whole host of activities developing new games and approaches to use in the enterprise education classroom – so, watch this space! Our intention here is that by sharing, we offer our communities ways to experiment and enhance the way we work with learners to prepare them for dynamic futures.

All-to-often, when we talk about wellbeing and enhancing capacities for dynamic futures, however (particularly in HE), we tend to focus on learners (students) and another way that GETM4 does things differently is to encompass a broader emphasis on ‘entrepreneurial talent’, which sits beyond entrepreneurs and students and explores academia and other industry sites to explore entrepreneurialism, wellbeing and happiness in the workplace.  I’m currently involved in undertaking some qualitative interviews around Entrepreneurial Academics and what helps/creates barriers for entrepreneurialism in academia (interested in taking part? Email me: victoria.mountford-brown@northumbria.ac.uk ) to explore experiences in different contexts.

Whilst we have an imperative to prepare the next generation of graduates for dynamic and uncertain futures, GETM4 also explores what will ultimately help those already working in HE – we are all, after all, lifelong learners ourselves – and I am quite hopeful that these projects will make a difference.  For instance, from my perspective one of the most exciting ongoing projects is around Next-generation metrics (see European Commission 2017) and the potential for developing meaningful metrics that incites support for and recognition of entrepreneurial and innovative achievements.  Francisco Pizarro from Universidad Adolfo Ibanez (UAI), our Chilean project partner organisation, is leading on a live project, exploring how UAI academics across different subject disciplines might engage with new generation metrics, that are meaningful to them and their work.  All-to-often our time must be devoted to achieving the metrics that we depend upon for funding, but GETM4 is exploring if these metrics are fit-for-purpose.  If, for instance, we are chasing ‘high impact’ publications as a key metric, where do we find time to focus on allowing our entrepreneurial activities to flourish?  How can we publish in ‘high impact’ journals in Entrepreneurship, as a relatively new discipline? Where do we find time for external engagement and enhancing our teaching? We do we find time to create, develop and launch new resources and educational products to enhance our abilities and ways of working together? If such activities are not recognised as valuable, when they are exactly the type of activities that make a difference, what can we do about that? GETM4 is taking on these tough challenges and by doing things differently, seeks to make a difference.

The role of the enterprise educator is dynamic – we need to do things differently…

One of the (only) downsides to attending Warsaw GETM4 Sandpit this year for me, was the clash with 3E Conference in Munich this year, where our very own Dr Emily Beaumont took the opportunity to pitch our paper on the ‘mission creep’ of enterprise educator roles and only went and won an award!  The ‘3E Catalyst Awards’ and the pitching of papers is a new and different way of doing things for the conference and providing the opportunity to share paper insights with an audience beyond standard conference tracks, in a different format – the design of this is a means of reaching more people and creating impact (doing things differently makes a difference!).

Figure 4: Dr Emily Beaumont pitches “Negotiating the Responsibilities of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship (EE) Educators: Ethical Dilemmas and Professional Practice in UK Higher Education” for a 3E Catalyst Award

The paper that Emily pitched draws on data from 2 EEUK commissioned surveys with UK-based enterprise educators and centres around data that demonstrates between 2020 and 2023 survey data collection points, that the scope of enterprise educators’ roles continues to shift.  This ‘mission creep’ that requires us to constantly adapt to the changing demands of the role and the world we live in, is significant.  The skills and competencies, required for the amorphous enterprise educator role, are everchanging and throughout the ongoing ambiguity and shifts brought about by external factors, we are required to adapt and upskill, often at pace.  We are, according to our very own Catherine Brentnall and the Special Issue editorial team, in a ‘time between two worlds’ in entrepreneurship education (see: Entrepreneurship Education in a Time Between Worlds: Transforming Theory, Practice and Scholarship).

Never have we needed so much to work collaboratively and to do things differently.

Figure 5 – AGCAS & EEUK Gen-AI Action Figures – representing our collaboration

On the day this newsletter and blog is released, we will be attending the AGCAS Annual conference at Newcastle University, where we are planning to do things a little differently too.  Rather than preparing a presentation to explain why we developed our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to work together in partnership, and to work smarter together, we will be challenging attendees to start collaborating during the conference and take part in a special quest…. No more spoilers for now – our rather brilliant Helen Hook will give you the full run-down of the event in next month’s Director’s blog – so don’t miss it and we hope to connect to some of you attending this year’s AGCAS conference, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Know anyone that is doing things differently and making a difference?  Consider applying/nominating for the National Enterprise Educator Awards – deadline 23^rd June!

GETM4 project socials: LinkedIn ; Facebook ; Insta: @getm4_d3 ; Tiktok: @getm4team