Networking. Love it or Hate it, it’s necessary in our line of work.  And let’s face it, necessary in any line of work!  But especially after the effects of the pandemic, networking and getting social again can be crucial to supporting your team and enhancing your own professional development.

But to get us going, sometimes we have to ‘reframe’ how we see things to give us the positivity and momentum to help us succeed.

It all starts with ‘being present’

In April, I received an email from another EEUK board member to say that we have an international guest coming to the UK in early May, and would I be interested in speaking with them.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I sometimes feel like I need a 16-week lead time to make sure there’s room in the diary… but this time, I was free.  And not only was I free, but it was also slap-dab in the middle of a stressful week.  My first instinct was to say no. But instead, I decided this could be a fantastic couple of hours ‘break’ to speak with a human, and not try to wrestle with the new ‘insert has to spell something out ACRYONYM here’ academic policy, report, etc. that would be due.

And I think right there, that’s a moment that could change how some of us think about networking.  How many people reading this blog would consider ‘networking’ a fantastic break, and something to look forward to?

The idea I’m getting at here is: cognitive reframing.  Common in psychology, cognitive reframing is all about changing the way you look at something, so you experience it differently.  Often this is about taking learning experiences from negative experiences and/or removing ‘cognitive dissonance’, i.e. how replacing flawed thought patterns with more realistic and positive ones.

When I received this email, my first reaction was that of negativity.  I saw my schedule, and it was full. I thought about the physical and psychological drain we can sometimes have now because we’re not used to dealing with people face-to-face post-pandemic. So, I immediately went to the negative.

For those who know me, I am very passionate about entrepreneurial learning and to support success (whatever that is/means/looks like) for all.  A new significant part of this has been the introduction of entrepreneurial mindset research, training, and pedagogy into my practice – as an educator (professional practice), but also in my own personal development.  Through entrepreneurial mindset training and development, I am starting to use new techniques to help me to reframe my perceptions of different actions, thoughts, and events that can have a profound affect (negative or positive) in my life.  Including the event described above.

So What? And Now What?

Love it or hate it, networking is something we all have to do.  But how we perceive events and tasks in our professional lives is really up to us.  We have the power to reframe our thinking and turn something that we might dread, into something we can see real, positive value in.

So, before your next networking event, try a little cognitive reframing training and see how it might help you.

Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash

How can (and should) those working in enterprise and entrepreneurship education and support change their practice in light of the climate and ecological crisis? This question was at the heart of a recent online event, delivered in collaboration with Enterprise Educators UK. EEUK has supported two research projects under the sustainability theme of its EERPF programme to explore this issue. Specifically, EEUK asked for projects which explored the relationship between EE and planetary sustainability, shifting focus explicitly towards the wider ecological context in which enterprise education is embedded.

This subject – planetary sustainability – seems so vast that the project which myself and Dr David Higgins, at the University of Liverpool proposed, is called: Enterprise Education and Planetary Sustainability – What can EE do? In this project, we have developed practical ways of pursuing (through the development of a workshop intervention), and discovered useful ways of thinking about, change (as an emergent process which can be generated through dialogic interactions).

We take as our starting point the assumption that we are existing (and educating) in an ecological context facing the immediate consequences and long-term implications of overshoot (Catton, 1982, Steffen et al, 2015;  Fanning et al, 2021), and where the depletion of natural resources is interacting with existing inequalities to create danger and harm for half the world’s population (see for example, IPCC 2021, 2022). In this crisis context, scholars and educators are being called upon to be ‘agents of change’ (Dodd et al, 2022), and in light of limited empirical examples about how educators might transform, contribute real responses and practical examples of change rather than simply advocate that it happens (Klapper and Fayolle, 2023).

In the online session we provided, we included references to the dialogic perspective that has supported our thinking and development. From this perspective systems change through a pattern of emergence (Holman, 2013), where change has a certain flow: disruptions break apart the status quo, the system differentiates and surfaces innovations and a new, more complex coherence arises. These ideas are elaborated by the Berkana Institute here, and further described in this blog by Daniel Rose here, and illustrated in various ways as the Two Loops Model for change.

The Two Loops model encourages us to recognise that a new system is created by people; people who become groups, groups who become networks and networks that become communities of practice which influence change. We might also use the model to reflect, where are we, our current practice, our institution in this change process? And how can we bridge to what’s next, what’s after  now, rather than holding on to dominant but dying ways of doing and being?

At the online session many EE colleagues shared various innovations, developments and transformations, they were already underway with (there is a list of these ideas and resources on EEUK’s events page). In the spirit of continuing this dialogue and strengthening connections between people interested in emerging what’s next, we are organising further online sessions to share the practice and build bridges.

Book onto our next session, on Friday May 19^th, 1.30pm til 3.30pm here

Another area where entrepreneurs can make a difference is in the food industry. The cost of food has also gone up significantly in recent years, making it difficult for people to afford healthy and nutritious food. Entrepreneurs who can create more affordable and sustainable food options will be in high demand. This can be done by creating new supply chains, developing new technologies for food production, or creating new business models that reduce waste and increase efficiency.

In addition to housing and food, entrepreneurs can also address the cost of living crisis in other areas, such as transportation and healthcare. The cost of transportation has gone up as well, making it difficult for people to afford the necessary modes of transportation to get to work, school, or other important places. Entrepreneurs can create new technologies and business models that make transportation more affordable and accessible. Similarly, the cost of healthcare has gone up, making it difficult for people to access necessary medical services. Entrepreneurs can create new solutions that make healthcare more affordable and accessible, such as telemedicine or alternative health clinics, such as homeopathy, reiki etc.

Photo by Victoria Feliniak on Unsplash

Photo by Ashley Winkler on Unsplash

Happy New Year, everyone. Marcus here, an Associate Dean of Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise at University of the Arts London. Since a university offering courses in art, design, fashion, media and performance is perhaps a slightly unusual home for an EEUK Director, I thought I’d use this opportunity to say a few words about creative enterprise and entrepreneurship education.

In one sense, of course, all entrepreneurship is creative, in the sense that it is both novel and useful. I’m talking, though, about entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative economy. For this blog, at least, I’m including freelancing and self-employment under that umbrella.

This might come as a surprise if you think of artists in Romantic terms as people living in garrets but, by some measures, UAL leads the UK higher education sector in producing entrepreneurs. This has something to do with the fact that self-employment accounts for 32% of creative industry employment in the UK, compared to 16% in the economy as a whole.

It is incumbent upon us, then, to give our students the skills and knowledge they need to start and run successful businesses, even if that success is defined in terms that go beyond the narrowly financial. At UAL, I’ve been involved in projects including the £900,000 StART Entrepreneurship programme, in setting up incubation for graduates and in supporting local creative businesses. There are numerous other initiatives across UAL and the entire sector.

If you work in a business school, you might be wondering what all this has to do with you. The answer is that I have always wondered if we, in art schools and arts and creative industries faculties, come at enterprise education in an unusual way. If so, I have wondered whether our approach could be of interest to the wider enterprise education community – especially given the prevalence of so-called ‘design thinking’ in enterprise and entrepreneurship education. A couple of years ago, for instance, I received EEUK funding to conduct a small project in which some of our design students reworked the business model canvas. You can see some of their alternative canvases here. Anyway, if you’re interested, please get in touch.

Start of a new year and we are already trying to continue with good intentions, It certainly has been an extremely odd few years and for us as enterprise educators, or indeed educators in general, the differences to what we were experiencing prior to March 2020 are profound.

A key area seems to be the generalised mental health issues that are being experienced by students to varying degrees which are manifesting themselves as apathy, anxiety and a distinct lack of resilience. From speaking with colleagues internationally, this is not an issue that is confined to the UK but is being experienced by educators on a global basis at multiple levels of study from primary to higher education.

This then poses the question of what we need to do to support these students moving forward. Is it a matter of just a change in pedagogy or is it something more fundamental that will force us to focus on the whole education environment including how we engage and how we assess?

My personal thoughts around this are that the sector needs to embrace enterprise education but more importantly the transferable skills it provides around creativity, resilience and problem solving to re-define the education landscape. We have a disaffected generation here and what we do in the coming months and years will have a profound and distinct impact on society in general.

The University of Greenwich partnered with Enterprise Educators UK on Thursday 24^th November to deliver a one-day conference in the university’s new entrepreneurial hub, the Powerhouse, exploring how to work effectively both within and outside higher education institutions to build enterprise eco-systems.

We were joined by over 35 enterprise educators from universities across the UK who participated in discussions exploring where enterprise education should be delivered in institutions, which local key players should be involved, and the role universities play in enterprise development for both students and external stakeholders.

Professor Leigh Doster, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean of Greenwich Business School opened the day with an introduction to the University of Greenwich, highlighting the university’s recent Small Business Charter accreditation and the upcoming Help to Grow scheme.

Rachel Brown, Head of Enterprise and Innovation at the University of Greenwich discussed how the university has begun to ‘join the dots’ of building effective enterprise ecosystems by created the Powerhouse, the university’s enterprise hub which now houses the Generator and Greenwich Research and Enterprise (GRE)teams, and provides space for entrepreneurial teaching, learning and practice via a co-work space. The Generator collaborates with a range of other teams across the university to increase the reach and effectiveness of their programmes, including academics, the employability centre, and the alumni team. It has also been enhanced by the creation of the Generator Advisory Board in 2020, a group of local organisations and entrepreneurs who advise on strategy and support the growth of initiatives.

Phil Kennedy, Head of Operations at Foundervine explained how Foundervine has built an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem outside of a HE setting by focussing on removing barriers for communities who are under-represented in enterprise.

Joe Blomfield, Enterprise Officer at the University of Greenwich led a panel discussion with three student and graduate entrepreneurs, exploring the question of how student entrepreneurs can contribute to the growth of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Abdirahman Ahmed, Marianna Alshina and Zsuzsanna Toth discussed their individual experiences of the Generator, and all agreed that universities had a key role in developing support networks for entrepreneurs, both for current students and alumni. The Generator also took this opportunity to proudly showcase products made by student and graduate entrepreneurs, ranging from vegan leather wallets and belts to handmade African print children’s clothing.

Anthony Crowther, NX Hub Manager at Goldsmiths, University of London delivered a session about the benefit of universities engaging with their local communities, discussing the importance of Goldsmiths’ Civic University Agreement which provides a framework for key local organisations in Lewisham to work together.

The final session featured University of Greenwich alumni and serial entrepreneur Dr Byron Cole talking about the ‘Power of Networking’ and the influence of this on his own entrepreneurial success.

If you’d like to participate in developing any of these discussions further please contact us on generator@gre.ac.uk

I need time to think

It’s very difficult to step away from the frenetic pace of HE teaching and attend a writing retreat. It almost appears anachronistic when anyone dares to say, ‘I need time to think.’ It’s ridiculous really when this is exactly what we should be having space to do regularly. 

Write, write, write

That aside, I cannot recommend a writing retreat opportunity more highly. The ISBE, EEUK REntEd SIG received funds to set up such an experience at the Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre within the University of Birmingham during October 2022. The Enterprise Eleven (+1) convened and dedicated two full days to writing. Enterprise and Entrepreneurial practitioners sat in the Grafton building, a warm Arts and Crafts inspired location on campus and pledged their troth to achieve tangible outputs from their ’write, write, write’ sessions.

We all welcome creative and constructive conversations

It was daunting, yes but what was specifically interesting from my perspective was the gender balance. It was 11:1 in favour of women and it created a supportive, humble, and highly professional tenor. There was an extraordinary array of talent and experience around the table that enabled constructive and creative conversations alongside peer mentoring at every stage of the process.

Accountability is everything

It also helped that the accommodation further highlighted the special nature of the retreat and offered space for reflection and plenty of frenetic typing and revisions. Having committed to specific goals that were revisited at the end of the event it felt managed and accountable. Consequently, every delegate, in the main, achieved their aim or were in touching distance at least.

We wrote and watched prime ministers come and go

The opportunity to discuss and chat generally about our institutions, research ambitions, the state of entrepreneurship, the resignation of the prime minster and all points between was a chance to share and create potential future collaborations.

There’s always time to explore entrepreneur education

Certainly, it was a chance to be amongst like-minded individuals that were all delighted to share tips and tricks, observations, and suggestions. I sincerely believe that everyone benefitted, friendships were rekindled and created too. It was also fascinating to reach into other professional lives and begin to understand some aspects of the varied and important work that is being carried out in this field under the guide of entrepreneur education.

To step away and draw breath should not be underestimated

To have the physical and headspace opportunity to write up and think carefully about projects and ideas cannot be underestimated. I know the organisers could see how successful the event was and how fruitful potential collaborations might be. The size of the group was intimate enough but allowed for discussion across fields These included factors that affect high growth companies; how professional modules can be further integrated and embedded into undergraduate provision; refugee remorse as a factor stifling progression; research collaborations and the impact of micro internships on paid work opportunities. This is just a snapshot of the research work output.

It is a significant investment of time, energy, resource, and brain power

Yet, if you can take the opportunity to attend a writing retreat, especially one organised by UKEE and ISBE, I would fight tooth and nail for the chance to attend.  Like any boot camp, things happen, perspectives change, goals are set and most importantly are achieved.  Having a couple of days to talk to other professionals working within enterprise education is also motivational and collegiate. Honestly, such an enterprise is highly recommended, and I thank Dr Emily Beaumont, Dr Breda O Dwyer organisers for their foresight and enthusiasm.

Vivienne Neale lectures in Entrepreneurship on the MSc Programme at Falmouth University.

This blog post shares insights from the work carried out by Westminster Enterprise Network, at the University of Westminster and does not intend to reflect the experience of all Student Enterprise teams and may not be directly applicable to all HEIs.

Author: Zsofia Kunvari, Enterprise Education Officer, University of Westminster

Enterprise teams sit far and wide within universities but whether they’re attached to Research & Knowledge Exchange, Careers & Employability, or other directorates, one problem often remains: How to bridge the gap between extra-curricular Enterprise activities delivered by Professional Services and the curricular provision delivered by Academic colleagues?

Academic Engagement as an area of activity within Student Enterprise – as well as a job title for a growing number of enterprise team members – covers the challenging task of aligning interests within and outside the curriculum.

My role as an Enterprise Education Officer, focusing on Academic Engagement, started 10 months ago as a brand-new role in my team, without a specific blueprint for how to do it. In this blog, I am hoping to shine a light on some of the challenges and wins that arose from committing to improving communication and collaboration between stakeholders across the extracurricular and curricular provision.

Whether having a dedicated team member responsible for this work or just embracing it as a shared team objective, investing resources into Academic Engagement can achieve three practical outcomes for your Enterprise team.

Better internal communications to generate more collaborations

Efficient communication between Student Enterprise teams and Academic colleagues is often challenging to achieve because of a lack of understanding about which strategies yield the best results. Starting by researching which communication channels for staff are available, understanding which of these channels are Academic colleagues engaging with the most and developing targeted strategies to communicate more regularly and more accurately with them.

Identifying problem-solution fit to address institutional targets collaboratively

By investing time speaking with Academics to understand which precise challenges they face in teaching, student experience and graduate outcomes, embedding enterprise and employability, or other relevant aspect of their work, this will inform the development of targeted interventions which your team can co-create with Academics to address these specific challenges.

Making Enterprise Education accessible without barriers to entry

With a greater than ever emphasis on engaging a majority of students in Enterprise activities, including hard to reach groups, embedding enterprise in the curriculum means giving exposure to all students enrolled on specific modules or courses, instead of relying on the availability and interest of a select few in the context of an extra-curricular provision.

At Westminster Enterprise Network, we used these three desired outcomes to guide the design and development of valuable and long-lasting collaborations between our team and Academic colleagues. We designed of our engagement workflow by strategically positioning the curricular experience as the first engagement in a linear step-by-step journey. The in-classroom experiences designed and delivered collaboratively with Academics, are well thought-through with relevant assessments, as well as the impact on student experience and graduate outcomes in mind. We are aiming to put the students in a good position to enrol into the rest of the extra-curricular activities our team offer to further develop and test their projects.

Our most recent developments include:

Tackling communication channels from the get-go

To circumvent the problem of mass and last-minute emailing, as well as relying on social media promotions, we recognised that we needed a more concerted effort in sharing our content where academic colleagues gathered information from. This included for our team, designing documents in the preferred format for Academic colleagues and presenting edited information to create an intuitive user journey without information overload.

Focusing on Live Employer Briefs as one effective and scalable intervention

Our team acts as an intermediate between industry and employer contacts and Academics to develop bespoke briefs for modules which support authentic assessments. Live briefs are presenting a real-world problem faced by an employer and presented to the students for them to produce a response. The briefs are selected to match the content of modules. Academic colleagues are responsible for designing the assessment, but the brief content is brought on by the employer with the opportunity for students to engage with the employer in a pre-brief Q&A.

With this approach, students get to use entrepreneurial skills (problem-solving, research, communication, leadership, pitching an idea…) in an accessible setting. The students can then decide to pursue entrepreneurship further having had a bitesize experience of the skills and mindset that may be required to develop their own project. In the first trial Semester, we are delivering five Live Briefs (fully or partially embedded in a course) with eight external employers involved to benefit over 200 students overall.

A hackathon to transform coursework into entrepreneurial projects

Built over several years’ iterations, our team is introducing a new large-scale extracurricular event that brings together in-class learning, employability, and a package of funding opportunities available to develop projects. Instead of students having to choose carefully between investing time in extracurricular Enterprise activities and staying on top of their studies and assessments, students will now be able to bring their coursework project into the hackathon to further develop it. In designing this new hackathon, the main objective was to reduce the time commitment we asked of students by designing a bridge event where they could take their existing coursework project and with our team’s support could turn it into an entrepreneurial project in receipt of pre-seed funding to encourage their first steps. After the hackathon, the students would access the rest of the support services on offer.

What we have learnt so far:

Trial, error, and iterations

Not everyone communicates the same way and when a university is so diverse in its offering, so are the problems and potential solutions. Sometimes the response we get is a hard no, and that is okay. You might be surprised to see that if you don’t give up but go back with a different offer, it might turn into a resounding yes. We keep good records of communications and contacts (CRM is a reliable companion) and we iterate our pitch as we go along. What we keep in mind are the overall strategic objectives our team have been set. Not all asks can be addressed straight away, and sometimes collaborations can be parked temporarily until the timing is right. Diligently gathering insights from conversations with Academic colleagues may just be the best way to tackle institutional targets more effectively by bringing a wider pool of colleagues and services to work together.

Be hungry for feedback and evaluate impact

Our team now knows the best platforms where to engage with Academic colleagues and how to collaborate to offer their students a first experience of Enterprise in the curriculum. In my role, I experienced the benefits of building closer work relationships with Academic colleagues, and we have already seen that our collaborative approach appeals. I make a point of regularly engaging with colleagues to ensure I am in the know about how our team can best contribute to enhance their course experience. Alongside this work, we are building a robust feedback and evaluation framework to capture the short term and longer-term impact of this Academic Engagement work through event feedback questionnaires, as well as measuring how these interventions affect the student experience and graduate outcome results.

With this blog, I wanted to share our team’s experience and what we learnt along the way. There is no doubt that Academic Engagement and embedding Enterprise in the curriculum ultimately leads to engaging with a larger proportion of students and removes some of the common barriers. Aligning Academic Engagement interventions with the extra-curricular offer creates a valuable loop which increases overall engagement levels and avoids delivering activities in a vacuum where opportunities to seamlessly guide students to further support are missed.

I write this blog more than a week since the International Enterprise Educators Conference 2022 at Swansea University and I’m still buzzing from the experience!  Being face to face with enterprise and entrepreneurship educators from around the world, connecting and supporting each other to enable excellence is a positively energising experience.

There were many highlights to IEEC2022; the venue, the inspiring keynotes, the range of tracks covering every aspect of enterprise and entrepreneurship education, and how could I forget Alison Price’s policy update, but for me, it was making new, and renewing existing connections.  Around half of the 290 delegates present had never been to a previous IEEC.  I met with a number of our ‘newbies’ over lunch and felt so happy when they spoke about how welcoming, how inclusive, how fun our community of enterprise and entrepreneurship educators are.  It put them at ease and enabled them to fully engage with the range of activities that were on offer.

There was also the opportunity to sit down and catch up with colleagues who I hadn’t seen in person for a number of years.  Between the spirited conversations and hugs I realised that these individuals were more than just like-minded colleagues.  After spending years working together, sharing good practice, having challenging discussions, we had actually become friends.  These friendships are powerful, they have enabled me as an enterprise and entrepreneurship educator to keep going when times get tough, supported me in moments of uncertainty, and they’ve been there to celebrate at times of triumph!

So to all those newbies that joined us at IEEC 2022; Welcome!  I look forward to seeing you again at IEEC 2023, at the University of Surrey and I hope like me, you begin to feel the strength and comfort of the enterprise and entrepreneurship education community enabling you on your own journey to success.