Tag Archives: SMEs

Festival of Enterprise: Saturday 18 July 2015

Posted on by

FestivalOfEnterprise - graphicBU hosts its first ever Festival of Enterprise on Saturday 18 July 2015 in the Student Centre on Talbot Campus.

The event will bring together young people, practitioners, academics and local business leaders to foster entrepreneurial spirit in the region. The programme will include:

  • A series of short ‘on the sofa’ sessions at ‘The Enterprise Café’. Experienced entrepreneurs will reflect on the founding of their businesses and how these have been shaped by the peaks and pitfalls of their successes. Key topics include Creative, Marketing, Finance and Cyber Security, among others.
  • Networking opportunities with local business development organisations.
  • Year 12 student ‘Enterprise Den’. Participants will create a digital business with a prize giving at the end of the day in Kimmeridge House.

Keith Pretty, a Lecturer in Business Development for IT at BU said: “This event is a great opportunity for people to meet entrepreneurs and SMEs, and get a feel for how they can have an impact in the industry, learning valuable lessons from those who have seen their careers flourish.

“It’s also an opportunity for the university to engage with people of all ages in business development; fostering new talent in entrepreneurship together with offering useful advice and guidance from professionals.”

Matt Hawkins, Chairman and Founder of C4L, is already a confirmed speaker at the Festival of Enterprise. Matt explained why he is involved with this event: “I appreciate the opportunity to give something back to our Digital Hub community and hopefully help nurture some of the entrepreneurial talent the South Coast has to offer. Young entrepreneurs are our future and I commend BU for giving them this platform for growth, I hope sharing my experience and scars along my business journey will increase the student’s chance of success”.

The event will be supported by colleagues from the Arts University Bournemouth (AUB).

You can find more information and book on the Festival of Enterprise website.

BU team to deliver finance seminars after winning ESRC bid

Posted on by

A team from Bournemouth University has won a research bid to provide seminars addressing access to finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The seminars will bring together keynote speakers from academia, government agencies and industry in order to discuss the most pertinent issues of SME finance and of credit risk, with a view to develop new research and policy agendas relevant to lenders and regulators.

The Access to Finance for SMEs workshops will be delivered after a successful bid to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK’s leading research and training agency addressing economic and social concerns.

Lending to SMEs is at the top of the agenda for governments around the world. With various political and economic incentives introduced to support SMEs, it is important not to overlook the practicalities of institutional arrangements for access to finance, especially in the environment of prudent lending.

The project team consists of BU’s Professor Jens Hölscher (Principal Investigator), and Co-Investigators Professor Andrew Mullineux and Professor Dean Patton, with colleagues from the University of Brighton, Aston University and the University of Nottingham.

In addition, the project team will collaborate with Professor Andreas Horsch and his colleagues from the Technical University of Freiberg in Germany, who will contribute on access to finance from Germany.