Cambridge Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning.

We decided to visit Cambridge Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning because the University of Cambridge is one of the world's most respected universities. Established in 1990, the School is a provider of management education and is consistently ranked as one of the world's leading business schools. The Centre is aimed at individuals wishing to develop their own business. Lucy Graves, project manager of Centre told us about programmes which focus on practical learning through the efficient communications. Thus, Centre provides access to entrepreneurial networks, business angels, academics, venture capitalist companies, regional development agencies, enterprise centre, alumni communities and other institutions. There is a program that we would like to implement in our centre, it is called "Enterprise Tuesday". It is a series of free evening lectures and networking sessions managed and delivered by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning since 1999. The programme aims to introduce participants to the world of business, as well as to encourage and inspire individuals to pursue their entrepreneurial ambition. They have strong collaboration with students through their communities. So, there are several things which are very important for us: we should find key individuals; have strong union and mission for it; create eco-system; and try not to become a buzz word.

Our first meeting in London was a panel discussion with students and professors of London School of Business and Finance.

The main goal of visiting LSBF was to meet with students and share the ideas about the projects of creating the Centre for Entrepreneurship in FINEC. We would like to thank Roy Butcher, Academic Dean of LSBF, Nadim Chaudry, the Head of Career Service and Employability, Asmik Magakian, Global Events Manager, Arseny Vlasov Strategic Corporate Business Developer, CIS and Elena Kaverina, Regional Director, CIS for a very motivating and informative start of our programme.

LSBF doesn’t have a special center for entrepreneurs, but what differentiates the School from many other Higher Educational Institutions is their primary orientation on developing practical business skills and relevant knowledge. The curriculum is focused on business education and development of social and presentation skills. There are a lot of students from different countries who create multicultural context of doing business, it’s a great competitive advantage of this university. It’s a school where students come to the ideas “how to create business” while studying and peer-to-peer communication.

We’ve met very inspired and experienced students, most of them have their own business or have had experience of running their business. They have entrepreneurial view on every process and help us to see the Center for our University as a commercial project.

This visit was really important for our group because we found some gaps in our project and the questions to discuss. Students pointed out that we should work on how to attract right people to our center and what we can give in return. We should identifying needs of students and set real and achievable goals for our center.

The Accelerator of London Metropolitan University

The Accelerator is London Metropolitan University business incubator. It is situated in Shoreditch and provides professional support to both students and external individuals. The university was established 10 years ago, however it is one of the leading business universities in Great Britain. The importance of the Accelerator and the Centre itself is that it is part of the university with a developed system of support, through which students and alumni get essential opportunities to become entrepreneurs, space to work on their projects, professional advice and networks as well as access to finance.

Richard Celm, a manager of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, who organised our meeting, made a very informative and dynamic presentation on the Accelerator. It was very important for us to ask questions on the Accelerator activities and we had a chance to learn a lot for our Centre of Entrepreneurship. He told us that the Accelerator Centre is open for students of any age and department. The Centre has developed a procedure of developing business skills and extending entrepreneurial knowledge as a preparation before the incubation process.

The Accelerator is well-equipped and provides physical space for the participants of the courses to work on their projects before the competition and afterwards. Therefore they can stay in the Accelerator after launching the project. These options could be taken to the project of the Centre for Entrepreneurship in FINEC.

The British Library Business and IP Centre.

This place is famous in the UK as well as all around the world, thanks to the extensive collection of books, newspapers, sound recordings and a lot more. Furthermore, there are numerous exhibitions that are both rare and amazing. The library is worth being called "the world`s knowledge keeper and promoter".

There were two reasons for us to visit The British Library Business and IP Centre. Firstly, the Library has its own Business and IP Centre, which provides all people aged 16 and older with a business idea with advice, support and mentoring. The second reason was the established relationship with Neil Infield, who already helped us a lot and inspired to initiate the project for the Centre for Entrepreneurship a year ago.

We would like to thank Neil Infield for his support and advice. Besides we got positive response from Nigel Spenser, Research & Business Development Manager at The British Library. Now we will do our best to keep our relations and report on the progress with our Centre.

Schlumberger

Being interested in the development of benchmarking principles of selecting hardworking and motivated staff our group visited a company world-famous for its employment system – Schlumberger. The visit was held by Natalia Smirnova, Personnel Manager in the Headquarters of the company, who provided structured and most relevant information about corporate culture aspects and company’s policy relating to employees. Schlumberger pays great attention to problems of employees’ mobility and job satisfaction. One of the most impressive things we found there was a special network, which allows everyone to see information about their colleagues, top managers and other employees.

Moreover, the company collaborates with universities and finds a lot of potential specialists there. Unfortunately FINEC is not a technical university, so (to tell the truth) some of us were a little bit disappointed of the fact that our graduates are not the target audience for Schlumberger. Still, we got important information on how our University graduates, specialists in finance and marketing, etc., can find their way to the company. It is necessary to mention that the company prefers its own specialists, supports them, develops their skills and provides them with a lot of career opportunities.

One can say that this visit didn’t relate directly to the target of our internship, but it made our vision wider and reminded us to focus on the staff of our center. We realised how much corporate culture and social responsibility matter. And these notions are important disregarding the size or profile of business. That was a great pleasure for us to listen to Natalia and we would like to express our gratitude to her.

University of East London

UEL has effective facilities for students to provide support and business knowledge. They are the Knowledge Dock Business centre and the Petchy Centre for Entrepreneurship.

These are the first centres we visited that are located within the university campus, not in a separate building in another district. This makes access to the university knowledge base and resources easier. And this successful location leads to increase of student awareness of these centres and therefore their involvement.

There are several services that we have found very useful during our visit there. First, mentoring and support of students' business projects with further 1 year free incubation. We met Mahyar Rahmantalab a second year student, who has already launched his business at RDSB East London University - “Best Gourmet barbeque” with emphasis on eco-friendly practices.

He told us about the help the Centre provided him with. First of all it is the ability to conduct market research and different surveys, moreover consultancy on business plan and its parts. So, the university is a great platform for different research and surveys.

Another important issue is launching the firms within the university. This provides part time job for students, for them to have working experience. These projects could be not beneficial from the business point of view but be helpful for the university's purposes (for example, fabric printing, sewing).

We found it very perspective to have patron (manager) in the organization structure who are able to consult on any questions , as student can' t always make a right decision on which course to attend and what things better not to do.

Knowledge Dock Business Centre is the only centre in the UK, accredited by EBN (European Business network) that provides cooperation with European business centers. To attract customers the Centre use all kinds of divide media and take park in all the competitions. Even if they wouldn’t win the name of their centre appears in different sources and thus increase awareness. Though it proves that different types of companies could be launched in the centre for entrepreneurship, as in our city start ups are supposed to be IT.

Manchester.

New Economy Manchester

Visit to the New Economy Manchester organization was one of the most interesting and helpful. New Economy is a part of the Manchester Family – a group of four organizations that provides growth and prosperity for Greater Manchester. All four remain individual organizations with their own Chief Executives and company boards but operate under a single business plan.

New Economy is responsible for research, strategy and evaluation including employment and skills policy, that’s why the organization is closely connected with Universities of Greater Manchester. The collaboration was established in order to sustain intellectual growth and skills, and in general to connect the Universities development policy with Greater Manchester strategic direction.

The visit was held by Lisa Harding, the Principal of the Project Development Department and representatives from 3 departments: Dr. Alexander Roy – Head of Research Department; Siobhan Shirreff – Acting Director and James Farr – Skills and Employment Department.

They have made highly informative and useful presentations about the work of each department, their key goals and achievements. We appreciate the support and information you provided us.

We got complete information about the projects that New Economy work on: graduate’s employability increase; economic intelligence development; work skills improvement; etc. Moreover New Economy’s experts shared the information about the mechanism of obtaining start-up bank loans in Manchester region: thousands show their intention to get a loan, half of them provide business plan and only 25% get a loan. However, every candidate whose loan application was rejected are provided with career advice and personal development trainings.

The visit to New Economy was useful for the Centre for Entrepreneurship within FINEC because of several reasons: we’ve seen the successful model of cooperation between university and local authorities; the model of obtaining start-up loans in Manchester could be a great example of university and funds collaboration in the process of pre- and post- loan application; the structure of tightly connected universities, authorities, funds, banks and businesses that all have the same strategic direction (The Greater Manchester growth and prosperity) is worth to be implemented in Saint-Petersburg.

The meeting was one of the most informative in our internship. It proves that research and analysis when conducted by people who are aimed at deciding problems of economy and know the target audience for implementing the results of their research can be a most effective tool for making significant changes in order to improve economic situation.

We would like to thank Lisa Harding, Alexander Roy, Siobhan Shirreff and James Farr for contributing so much in our understanding of the economy of Greater Manchester.

Visit to Bo-Concepts in Manchester

One of the companies we visited was Bo-concepts. Bo-concepts are one of the leading promotional agencies in the UK. Their vision is to the first choice provider of Promotional Space Management and Event Management within the UK. Bo-concepts bring space to life by offering unique promotional space to life opportunities and promotional events that make a real difference to business. Alison, the founder and director, participated in the Goldman Sachs “10000 Small Businesses” program which provides access to business education, financial capital, and business support services.

While our visit we were inspired by several things.

The first one is developed attitude to corporate culture and personalized approach to staff management. They have their own internal currency which is used as medium of exchange within the company. Each employee receives one Bo-concepts dollar for well-done job and then can change it for bonuses.

The second thing we were interested in was phased registration of the done expressed in quantitative terms. All this information is available to all the employees of the company that help keep track of the state of affairs and respond quickly to changes.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 461