Universities Host Special Entrepreneurship Week Challenge
The NCGE’s National Champion for Graduate Entrepreneurship, Cobra Beer founder Lord Karan Bilimoria, got Global Entrepreneurship Week off to a flying start at London Metropolitan University last Monday. He gave an inspirational talk and question-and-answer session for 50 students from Uxbridge College and Langdon School, East Ham who were about to tackle the Flying Start-Make Your Mark Challenge, as well as London Met students, staff from the Business School hosting the Challenge, and volunteers from successful businesses.
The school and college students, aged from 14-19, had been set the Challenge first thing in the morning along with 55,000 other pupils across the UK. What made this Challenge different was that they had experts from the Business School on hand to encourage their ideas.
Dr Lorna Collins, the NCGE’s Director of Flying Start, and Harry Rich, Chief Executive of Make Your Mark, were on hand to mark the launch of this first event bringing schoolchildren into universities for the national Challenge: to create an entrepreneurial idea based on seven Olympic and Paralympic values.
Since London Met is the capital’s leading university for sports and is closely involved in preparing for the 2012 London Olympics, the Vice-Chancellor, Brian Roper, offered an additional prize for the Challenge to support the development of the best Olympics focused business idea.
After a show of creative energy in their initial brainstorming session, the students got to meet one of the country’s leading entrepreneurs. Lord Bilimoria asked first how many in the room wanted to start a business. At least half put their hands up. “The most important thing you need to start a business,” he said, “is to really want to start it.”
He also tackled the old-fashioned view that university is irrelevant to entrepreneurs. “The purpose of the NCGE, for which I am the National Champion,” said Lord Bilimoria, “is to encourage all students from any university background to start a business.” He’s proud to have persuaded famous entrepreneurs who said education isn’t necessary to change their minds.
When he asked how many of the school and college students intended to go to university. Three-quarters of the audience raised their hands. “I resisted the temptation to start a business straightaway,” he said. “I wanted to get my education first. That knowledge has served me well.”
The students asked lots of great questions and left after lunch buzzing, ready to get on with the Challenge in their teams. And we’ve just heard that a team from Langdon School did so well they made it into the London Regional Final for the 14-16 age group. They will compete against 19 other school teams from London this Friday. Good luck to them!
Three other universities – Bournemouth, Greenwich and Leeds Metropolitan – invited schoolchildren to visit them for a ‘university’ Challenge. This is something Flying Start and Make Your Mark hope to extend even further next year.
