What are we doing for Enterprise Week?

A whole range of events.  Some will be student-focused and some will be more centred around businesses. For example, we are going to have panels of employers from different industries talk to students about how they can get into their organizations and hold private interviews with them. We are going to host a full-day workshop helping students develop their ideas and turn them into successful businesses. We are also going to have an awards ceremony for the best local businesses and a range of business networking events for members of the local community. It’s going to be a full yet fun week.

What am I doing?

Our office and me personally are involved in almost every detail of organizing this week of entrepreneurship events and activities. From the logistical side of booking rooms, catering, parking spots, drafting agendas and sending out invites, to the more crucial side of ensuring student and guests turnout is as high as possible. In this effort of course, we have the valuable contribution of many of our academics who are helping out by giving us contacts and spreading the word to their students, local authorities who are co-hosting some of the business events, and of course the departmental administrators who are involved in making the process smoother for us.

It’s hard work and sometimes stressful. But I’m sure the outcome will be worth all the efforts and the time spent.

What is the Freshers’ Fair?

Whoever has studied and/or worked for a UK university must be familiar with this term. The Freshers’ Fair is the peak of all celebrations, as student societies and clubs gather in an area set up as an exhibition aiming to introduce themselves to the newcoming students, grab their attention and attract new members. Freshers’ Fairs are an opportunity for first year undergrads and postgrads to meet like-minded people and to join societies that match their interests, while it’s an opportunity for everyone to have some fun and entertain themselves. My personal favourite part in Freshers’ Fairs – I must admit – is the various candy treats which societies offer hoping to attract more people.

What did I do there?

I helped our Entrepreneurs’ Club promote its causes and introduce itself to the newcomers. Albeit being a specialized society, we did very well, as we signed up about 100 members. Also, we did not offer candy, but we did offer money. To be exact, we promoted our entrepreneurship competitions for students which we’ll run throughout the year, which offer cash prizes to the winners. Our introductory catch-phrase “would you like a chance to win £1,000?” seemed to have worked very well, as lots of students stopped by to talk to us and find out more.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed the whole atmosphere and buzz and I’m already looking forward to next year’s Freshers’ Fair.

Impressions

It’s not an exaggeration to say that we were all really impressed. First of all, each and every team displayed great creativity – we had everything from theatre-style presentations to short videos. We heard some excellent ideas including books with recipes from around the world, customizable T-shirts, homemade goods and card games, to mention but a few. Even more amazing was the fact that most teams managed to end up with very healthy profits, which, in some cases, were even more than double their initial £50 start-up capital.

Some of the entrepreneurs from the panel gave brief presentations about how they started, how they got their business ideas and their highs and lows. The pupils asked lots of very well thought out and thorough questions, which impressed everyone.

In the end, they walked away with certificates and praises from everybody for their good work.

And now what?

This was a pilot project for schools, run by the University and Young Enterprise London. Due to the massive success and fantastic results, we are all really eager to repeat similar initiatives in the near future to spread the word to the younger generations: entrepreneurship is an exciting career choice with lots of potential for those who have the ideas, the energy and the commitment to devote to starting their own business.

All of the pupils have now gone back to their schools, where they will implement their business ideas. They will then come back for a celebration event in July, where they will have to make a presentation on their progress in front of their classmates, teachers and a panel of real-life entrepreneurs. By the end of this procedure, our year-6 guests will hopefully know all the basic aspects of starting and running a business including practical things such as resource restrictions, the importance of budgeting and the necessity of a specific business plan, while at the same time, they will get the chance to boost their creative thinking.

These are the things our pupils learned. Here is what I learned by project-managing this series of masterclasses: 

1. Organizing an event is NOT an easy thing. Juggling around room bookings, filling out catering request forms (taking into account allergies and any food intolerances), communicating with porters for the room set-up and IT people for the technological support, arranging parking permits and making sure security procedures are followed, is as exhausting as it sounds.
2. Children of the same age are NOT all the same. We held three sessions over three different days and each audience had its own unique characteristics and responded completely differently to the day’s activities.
3. Entrepreneurship is NOT an adult-exclusive topic. I couldn’t help feeling impressed by the business ideas some of the pupils came up with, by the accurate way some seemed to perceive business, and by the maturity and enthusiasm some of them displayed to something that I was afraid might be a boring learning experience to them.

In a nutshell:

Although extremely tiring (imagine having to tame 80 pupils who can’t wait to go out and play after 3 hours of intensive activities) I loved the experience and look forward to more of these events in the future.

Through a series of games and collaborative activities, pupils were encouraged to learn how to trade, got involved in product development, pricing, costing and promotion, and brainstormed their own business ideas. Games and activities included:

• Representing a real country which had to sell its goods to the “UK” and trade with the “World Bank” for resources
• Running a restaurant and making group decisions on operation, the menu, pricing and costing and profit making
• Re-branding a fruit juice aimed at adults by designing a promotional poster that would appeal to children their age
• Discussing their own ideas for a product or service which could be developed and sold within their own schools in the next month

In the next post, I will what did the pupils learn.

This could not be more relevant nowadays, given the current economic climate. Students from any discipline should be given the opportunity to develop transferable skills that will ultimately make them more employable. I recently attended a lecture of the MSc in Sports Science as a guest. Not your typical enterprise-focused students, you would think. However, those students were given the task to work in groups and present their suggestions on how a real business, a sports rehabilitation centre, could improve its output. Students came up with bright and innovative ideas which they presented eloquently and convincingly. They were a joy to watch and made their teacher really proud. Which confirms what I said earlier – any student can be enterprising and entrepreneurial as long as they are given the right stimulus and sufficient guidance.

This is the very reason why universities need to embrace similar initiatives and think outside the limited academic box of ways to help students develop their full potential. After all, surely this is the very purpose of universities. To develop students as individuals needs to be a top priority for any higher education institution today.

What does this have to do with higher education? The debate about how the education system fails to provide students with soft skills and how little it does to prepare them for real-life challenges once they embark on a career has been going on for decades. The argument that higher education modules need to escape the stereotypical classroom learning model and discover more connections with the real world couldn’t be more relevant. Employers are complaining that college graduates, who are undoubtedly bright people, have difficulties grasping the practical issues of work and adapting to workplace requirements. These graduates are just used to different ways of thinking – more academic than practical – and they definitely need, and do indeed take, their time to adjust.

This is the challenge that enterprise modules at universities aim to tackle. They are designed to teach students those all-important transferable skills that sadly tend to be overlooked while at university, yet constitute essential requirements for any career: communication, teamwork, public speaking, problem solving, leadership, creative thinking, and business acumen. In other words, enterprise modules aim to bridge the gap between academia and the workplace. My university has started to realise the importance of these classes and has introduced enterprise modules across different degree disciplines, from business to sports and life sciences. By learning and practicing how to write effective business plans, overcome challenges, solve day-to-day problems, and pitch their ideas, students develop the soft skills that will allow them to be successful outside academia and will prepare them for a range of careers beyond graduation.

Enterprise seems to be the most neglected and underestimated area of activity for academics – especially the most traditional ones. It’s not teaching, it’s not research or publishing work, it sounds suspiciously business-y, so it’s not for them, they may think.

On the other hand, universities are spending substantial resources on the promotion of various forms of enterprise that will lead to third stream income generation. This supplements first and second stream income, which comes from government funding and tuition fees. With third stream activities, higher education institutions are looking to externalise their academic knowledge and expertise, and link with the public and private sectors to form mutually profitable partnerships. This is the big scheme of things, which universities hope will eventually make them more independent of government funding.

But how much do academics know about it?

Surprisingly, it seems that little is currently being done for this message to be communicated to academics, so many of them don’t even know about it. Compounding this problem is the fact that academics have little time to do anything other than research and teaching. Even more surprisingly, contribution to third stream income generation is increasingly becoming a pre-requisite for academic promotions, although many academics still don’t know about it.

And this is where the paradox lies: on the one hand, universities expect academics to participate in activities that will help their institution financially if they aspire to reach higher career levels more quickly. The higher the academic level, the higher the requirement for involvement in such activities is supposed to be. On the other hand, few academics are aware of this requirement and of the positive impact it can have on their career development. Also, contrary to what universities expect, it is usually the lower level academics who are the most willing to get involved in enterprise and income generating activities. Higher-level staff often appear much more reluctant. Traditional perception of their role as non-commercially-focused, resistance to change, lack of awareness about new trends in higher education, a busy workload and heavy responsibilities, or simply job burn-out are some of the most common reasons for their lack of involvement in third-stream activities.

Whose responsibility is it?

This is a difficult question with an equally difficult answer. It seems like it’s often left in the hands of Business and Enterprise Offices to “educate” academics on those all-important issues, inform them about the latest developments and find creative ways to communicate to them that third stream activities are worth a shot despite their time limitations. My office has dynamically started campaigning for enterprise with events, competitions, workshops, seminars and one-to-one meetings. It will be very interesting to see the outcomes and impacts of these efforts, and whether enterprise will become more of a familiar ground for our academic community in the years to come.