At Plymouth University, our vision is to be the enterprise university. Our vision sets out the type of university we aspire to be – by placing enterprise at the heart of everything we do, we are developing an innovative and creative culture that empowers people.

At the University there is a strong emphasis on entrepreneurship and enterprise within the curriculum and wider student experience. Annually, 12,000 students benefit from placement or work-based learning opportunities, and our employability centre “Gateway” supports students and alumni in accessing these opportunities. We use various approaches to embed enterprise education, ranging from simulations like SimVenture through to the Young Enterprise Start-Up programme. We also use the FLUX business challenge across a range of programmes including marketing, 3D design, chemistry and computing. Our students are supported in national competitions and have recently participated in the IBM Business Challenge, Microsoft Protégé (our team won in 2011) and SIFE (our 2011 team won the ‘Rookie Champions’ award). We also run a business ideas challenge called ‘Tectona’ for students, staff and alumni. This has led to successful business start-ups, some hosted in our ‘Formation Zone’ incubation space. Plymouth also has a strong interest in social enterprise. We are a founding partner of the Social Enterprise University Enterprise Network and became first UK University to be awarded the Social Enterprise Mark in 2012.

The University encourages students to be enterprising, right from the very top of the institution, and celebrates successes through events such as the Vice Chancellor’s Enterprise Awards. It is this culture, and approach to embedding enterprise education, which has led to Plymouth being short listed for the Times Higher Entrepreneurial University of the Year Award in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Plymouth University EEUK Contact: Dr Jonathan Lean