Category Archives: Enterprise Education

Blog, Enterprise Education, Skills Development

Experience , Employability, Enterprise

Having worked with a number of universities over the last five years, the motivation for providing any sort of entrepreneurial development is coming down to three core KPIs.

When we consider the student within a university, they seek these three important indicators.

Experience

This aspect some years ago was the key reputation of the university. Now its about the enjoyment provided by the student’s union and the quality of the lecturing staff in providing an educational service. When you analysis the recent survey, the clear winners are those regional city universities which have professional on campus student services. The bottom of the table are those in major cities whose can not compete with the volume of other activities which the city offers.

However, the table shows interesting deviations which when you compare with enterprise support at that university. For an increasing number of students the size of the student bar or the availability of a 24/7 hockey pitch are not on their radar.

Employability

The curriculum and the offered courses are sliding against the sledge hammer of change to accommodate the holy grail of employability and the consequential Destination of Leavers survey. Promoting and recruiting students which have less than a 50% chance of employability is an impossible task for the majority of universities.

So embedding the opportunities to engage with business, gain valued experience and create a dialogue with employers which seek your students has to start, as always at fresher week and progress to the milk round and end with the much valued but of of reach alumni.

Enterprise

Everyone who goes to university should work in an enterprise. It may be government, social, charity, self employment, startup, SME or even a FTSE 250. In every case our students should know where they provide the value, which pays them their wages. Around this concept we develop our students with enterprise awareness and skills.

I was listening to BIS minster who stated when Warwick University started their business school and student and staff tried to stop this, stating that universities and business should be separate.

  • Education and Business should always be aligned.
  • Research and Business should not always be aligned.

Enterprise in education should accommodate the student requirements to service their desire to fulfill their career ambitions.This may be to work in business, government, freelancing or starting a business. Every single one of them should be entrepreneurial in their outlook to ensure they seek the opportunities available to them and the country.

Blog, Enterprise Education, Skills Development

Little is more in Enterprise Support

When you are starting a business the more help and support you get the better, you would expect so.

However, after some years of helping and supporting startups, I am starting to see this is not always the case.

I guess its the difference between support and Intervention. To support someone, especially with mentoring and signposting which allows the person to find their way (with a little more direction) and   learn the skills and network required to manage their business is the right thing to do.

Its when the support becomes intervention that when the entrepreneur stops being the person in control and the support organisation does. This is when you have to do 50 hours doing this, sign all these forms and the process you will follow to make your business  is this.

This is wrong!

Everyone learns to be a entrepreneur differently, because they HAVE to be learn to be an entrepreneur, to solve problems, to look at the world in a new light of opportunities.

The problem these organisations have is that governments like a controlled process. They provide contracts to build bridges, its take some many weeks and will cost some much money. However, stating we can make some many businesses in so many weeks is not such a quantifiable statement. The process of starting a business normally starts many years before the person makes this statement. It may start with Dragon’s Den or The Apprentice in 10 grade. So the only thing you are really doing is counting those who have already spent many years deliberating this step.

The best entrepreneur support organisations do only ONE thing, they create an amazing network of people who all benefit from being part of it. This is because:

  1. Co-founders can be found in your network
  2. Mentoring can be found in your network
  3. Resources can be found in your network
  4. Funding can be found in your network

So before you start out in 2013, ensure you have the support network around you.