Enterprise UK Blog

There were some confused faces around the Nissan Manufacturing Plant yesterday as their site was invaded by a Polar Bear! Lucky for them this one was harmless and in fact wanted nothing more than to tell them all about Global Warming and protecting the environment.

Percy the Polar Bear is the main character in a series of locally set books developed by Northumberland Church of England School. The books use familiar local surroundings to hammer home the importance of looking after the places we love living in for the next generation.

Now, with just one day to go until our regional final of the Make Your Mark Challenge we really are on the edge of our seats and can’t wait to see our teams present their ideas.

Whilst we contain our excitement (just) we would like to thank all of our teams for the high standard of entries from schools and colleges across the Yorkshire and Humber region.

At times we really do wish that we could bottle the enthusiasm of our young people so that we could share all of their entrepreneurial spirit. But, we know we can’t, so instead take a look at our footage from the launch day. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Inspired by Global Entrepreneurship Week a group of UK entrepreneurs have decided to sell the world’s first 24 Hour Start Up on ebay! From 12.00 today a yet to be created business was listed for sale that will continue to develop over the next 24 hours.

Nonsense London and White October have given themselves a day to create a business  from scratch. A crack team of sleep-deprived entrepreneurs. creatives, designers and developers will be conceiving, designing, developing and branding a web-based business. which they’ve listed for auction on eBay.

The voice has only just recovered from my speednetworking session at the yorkshire business show at doncaster racecourse yesterday. 30 people in an hour and only 2 I already knew. businesses range from IT solutions to dog chocolates for christmas. met some potential ambassadors and business supporters.

Sky satellite channel DMV Digital in Manchester ran an item on Global Enterpreneurship Week and invited me in my role as Ambassador Manager and Shazan Qureshi (Ambassador) to the studio. I was able to mention all the wonderful events that take place in Schools, Universities and organisations during this week. I was pleased to be able to talk about how important Ambassadors are to our campaign. Shazan talked eloquently about his journey as an Ambassador and the support available through Business Link and NWDA to entrepeneurs. Our nerves didn’t get the better of us thankfully!

Watch the full interview below.

It is a common misconception that you need to have a great, unique idea before you start your business journey. In actual fact, you don’t.

Allow me to use the analogy of a doctor to illustrate. A doctor will go to medical school for perhaps 6 years or more. The first years of study will entail learning all about medicine, the human body, biology and patient care. In fact, aspiring doctors will learn every fundamental area and principle of medicine during that time. It is only in the final years that doctors really start to know what they want to specialise in. They spend the first few years learning the fundamentals.

The North East’s Global Entrepreneurship Week festivities culminated in the annual Women into the Network, North East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.

The 2009 WIN Awards, sponsored by Business Link, honoured enterprising women from all around the region on Friday night at the Hilton Hotel. Hosted by TV’s Wendy Gibson, over 400 of the region’s most enterprising women and their supporters came together on this; the tenth anniversary of the Awards, for what everyone agreed was the biggest and best celebration to date.

Award categories included:

• Best New Business Award,

19th November was the day that South Yorkshire buzzed with the sound of Global Entrepreneurship Week. The day started in Sheffield with the Take Control Today event at Hillsborough College, then went on to the Social Enterprise Showcase at Doncaster Dome which included a lively question time where the audience were inspired and informed by a range of social entrepreneurs including SINE FM, Refurnish, Life CIC and M25 Create chaired by Mick Bailey. The day was topped off with a creative workshop involving members of Barnsley College’s Young Chamber and JCI Barnsley.

Forward Ladies celebrate GEW 09

Members of Forward Ladies held a Christmas Fayre on Saturday as part of GEW 09 at the Metropole Hotel Leeds

Students and the public got a chance to debate and discuss a range of global and ethical issues at the Leeds Summat on Saturday as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. Visitors were also able to purchase a range

Leeds Summat 09

gof fairtrade products and inspirational and informative books on related topics.

Leeds Summat 09

The newly formed Young Chamber of Barnsley College met with members of the Junior Chamber to develop their creative skills to come up with new ideas with the help of creative oates

JCI Barnsley and Barnsley College Young Chamber GEW meet-up

. The outcomes helped with business formation, business growth and how to write an essay on managing HR!

So, that was Global Entrepreneurship Week, that was.

What a week. I attended a microscopic fraction of even the events that were held in UK: the people who attended even this tiny sample of events were drawn from all walks of life and each had their own highly distinctive story to tell. If the week taught me one thing, it’s that entrepreneurs defy easy characterisation and stereotyping.

Global Entrepreneurship Week sparked a great deal of discussion, debate, and exchanging of ideas online too. The blogosphere was particularly energetic in its coverage of the Week.

For me Global Entrepreneurship Week began and finished with teams of enterprising students, from the Make Your Mark Challenge launch in North Yorkshire through to Student Speaks in Wakefield.

Student Speaks was an opportunity for youngsters from secondary schools across the Wakefield district to be involved in GEW, discuss the theme ‘skills, enterprise and work’ and in particular have their say on what’s important to them. It was supported by Wakefield Together Partnership but planned by a group of students from Freeston Business and Enterprise College.

From humble beginnings, Global Entrepreneurship Week has come a long way in a short time. What started as a small bunch of people has grown into a truly global movement, with 88 countries, 17 of which have gained support from their Presidents, Prime Ministers, Princes and Princesses.

This year, the United Nations HQ in Geneva joined in, with a week long series of workshops that was launched with an Inauguration Cocktail on Monday, attended by UN staff and Mission Delegates from more than 50 countries.

Millfields Trust, based in Plymouth have been announced as winners of the national Social Enterprise Day photography competition. This also marks the second year in a row a Devon business has won the national award.

The winning picture, shot by Peter Dukes was taken at the ‘graduation’ ceremony Widening Horizons project funded by Millfields that saw year 5 children from 6 local primary schools in Stonehouse, Plymouth participate in a programme of workshop activities from a range of different employment opportunities. The photo aimed to capture the happiness and exuberance of young people and shows the children’s determination to throw themselves into the programme. They will receive a unique ‘behind the scenes’ experience with leading media and digital arts centre Watershed.