| Have lead and managed many entrepreneurship programmes over several years. Most
recently my role in Universities has been to lead Centres
of activity in entrepreneurship, so for example at
Nottingham this involved establishment of the Centre
for Growing Businesses and most recently at Cambridge
the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning. These Centres
typically have a team of a dozen people orchestrating,
innovating and managing programmes, courses and events
to help inspire, inform and advance people and their
ideas.
Below are a few examples of courses and programmes that have been run successfully
over many years.
Responsibilities as initiator and Programme Director for:
Supergrowth™ Team Venture Programme
This programme
arose from a conference paper (1993) which won an award
because it put forward the notion that team based
start-ups would be more cost effective for the tax payer
for the creation of rapid growth businesses than the
approach being used at the time. The paper lead to an
awareness raising project in Essex, Hertfordshire and
subsequently the first Supergrowth™ programme in
Peterborough. These programmes have been the
intellectual property of Transitions. We have run
several programmes, (in Cambridge, Peterborough,
Norfolk, West and East Midlands, Merseyside and London)
had over 50 businesses and 200 managers attend them.
KPMG have jointly run two with us and we have a contract
to licence it to them through a training of trainers'
programme of activity.
Accelerated Business Development Programme
Following
internal evaluation of Firmstart and CRED, I pruned the
programme content down to 5 main lessons that had
created the greatest impact on businesses, stripped out
some of the "bells and whistles" and offered to help run
these through the (then) emerging Business Links. I have
run 25 of these Programmes in just 4 years
Cranfield Enterprise Development Programme
(CRED)
A very similar
structure to Firmstart. However, the economic and
political climate had moved from start-ups and we
adapted the programme to suit the needs of smaller
growing businesses. I ran 5 of these Programmes.
Firmstart
This was a 6
month part-time (week-end) programme of support for
start-up and early stage businesses. We had
approximately 20 businesses per programme and mixed
class-room with small group counselling and one to one
mentoring. I started as a counsellor, then taught and
subsequently ran 4 programmes.
Venture Cash (Agriculture sector – NatWest
funded)
Venturecash was
a business plan competition run by Nat West for students
of Agricultural Colleges as part of the NFU farm
diversification campaign. I persuaded the Organisers to
inject an intermediate stage of a three day training
course at Cranfield. We ran this for five years and I am
aware from feedback that this training made a very big
difference to the quality of business plans that came
forward for judging.
Programmes for overseas Enterprise
promotion
Developing
Income Generating Enterprises. I ran this programme at
Cranfield for three years. A 6-week course on theory and
practise of enterprise development. It was aimed at
micro business promotion in developing countries. This
programme was moved to in a joint venture with Kenya
Institute of Management (KIM) and adapted to local
conditions as the Small Enterprise Promotion Programme.
It continues in modified form run entirely by KIM. My
current international activity is to create alliances
with Universities, promote Doctoral research and
generate income through activities with the private
sector. Dr. Francis Neshamba who I recruited last year
is implementing this vision. |
