Sabrina Kiefer, Venture Coach in the school's Entrepreneurship Hub
A new series of five monthly best practice discussions for experienced entrepreneurs and business scholars begins today.
The Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Design (IED) Best Practice encounters are monthly discussions aimed at entrepreneurs who have experienced taking a company through the first three years of start-up and researchers studying this phase of business development. Anyone with experience of running start-ups and SMEs, of managing innovation, drafting related policy or active in research in these fields is welcome.
After the initial hurdles of start-up in the first three years of operations, a company faces new challenges as it strives toward success. Typically these issues include financing, balancing expenditure with early revenue streams, increasing staff numbers and often bringing in a leadership team offering a new range of skills.
A new series of discussions are being offered to help explore and understand this crucial phase, open to experienced entrepreneurs and business scholars. The IED Best Practice encounters are being organised by the School’s Entrepreneurship Hub, Europe’s most well regarded Entrepreneurship researchers who also work to disseminate insights to interested parties.
Sabrina Kiefer, Venture Coach in the school's Entrepreneurship Hub, arranged the series. She said:
"We‘re excited by the opportunity to share our work with a wide audience. We want to hear about the experiences and viewpoints of entrepreneurs. We also hope to share our research with them to help inform new ways of working, or help them negotiate a problem they may be facing."
Practitioners with relevant experience, policy makers and management scholars are invited to join the remaining four sessions, which can be attended as stand alone discussions or as it is intended, as a wide ranging forum for best practice discussion. Each session is held on the last Thursday of each month through until June. Sessions lasts an hour and half covering topics relevant to managers steering a company’s growth.
An expert speaker introduces a topic before a panel will consider alternative approaches and ideas to help tackle problems related to financing growth, developing partnerships for innovation, leadership teams and working with emerging markets. Each panel consists of speakers from academia and industry, including PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Nokia, IBM, Chesyl and smaller growth-oriented companies like eCourier, Renesola and MedCell Bioscience. Guests will be encouraged to contribute to the session so best practice considered and shared.
The series is supported by the Higher Education Innovation Fund, which has commended the Business School's strategy of actively sharing information and insights with non-academic audiences to foster best practice in knowledge transfer.
"We’re not expecting to reach a consensus on every issue," said Kiefer. "We may conclude that there are many ways to respond to the issues faced by entrepreneurs but the sharing of insights is important in itself. The advantage of Europe's strongest entrepreneurship group is that we have the depth of quality to hold debates that promise to be highly influential for all involved."
The sessions will take full advantage of the Business School's research expertise, joint first business school in the recent Research Assessment Exercise for world leading or internationally excellent research. The sessions also draw on the School's close links with industry, from young start-ups to multinational corporations.
Each session takes place on the last Thursday of the month and more information can be found here.
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