GUEST COLUMN

May 2010: John Leach, Winning Pitch

There is increasing interest in the role that fast growing businesses play in economic development. Quite rightly so! Gazelles, as they are also known, are few and far between, they represent only 5% of business stock in the UK, but they create up to 60 to 70% of new jobs. They bring with them innovation, creativity and graduate jobs, and many are international players. They are pivotal to the future growth of the UK and our regions. They become the regionally significant employers of tomorrow.

It is important to remember that it is the fast growing companies that will pull us out of recession – not the corporate giants that created economic misery for many individuals and families over the last 2 years! We must nurture and grow the next generation of ambitious entrepreneurs because they make such a difference.

It is important to recognise that these entrepreneurs are a rare breed and the support needed is quite unique. They often have a strong sales focus, which is fundamental to any business, but they often lack the disciplines that go with growing a team, developing structure and delegating responsibility. Management and organisational support is critical to many of these entrepreneurs – without it, they won’t grow and, at the extreme, the wheels come off and they go out of business. Without a strong team of thinkers, doer’s, controllers and sellers, accessing finance becomes a major challenge, as our friends in the financial community always need to be convinced of a strong supportive structure.

What has struck me over the past few years is the number of contenders for the accolade of being high growth. Many of them have great propositions but they are failing to reach their full potential. The reasons are varied - they don’t want to take the risk, they might not realise their own potential, or (more often than not) they simply don’t know how to make it happen. It’s these latter two groups on which we must focus. Any local authority or public sector group interested in creating vibrant economies must place emphasis on assisting such individuals and companies. In the long term, these entrepreneurs will repay the economy back many times over. A stimulus for change and thinking big needs to be the key message for those with latent, untapped potential. They need to be shown how to:

• Create the right mindset for growth by giving them the tools to cascade a vision into a plan
• Lead and motivate a team to move in the same direction
• Get everyone singing from the same hymn-sheet with values and behaviours that guide staff – “this is how we do things around here”
• Take action: success results from 20% thinking and 80% doing
• Release their passion to live fulfilled and meaningful lives
• Embed innovation in their organisations – from the front door through to staff and the market place
• Recognise that staff are the most important asset of any business – they are more important than customers; if staff are happy so are the customers!
• Do away with the fear of selling – so many have this!
• Focus on the customer world and deliver outstanding service
• Unlock the potential of their intellectual property – the hot investment topic of the decade
• Build strong partnerships and alliances to reach scale more quickly
• Embed systems and processes that become the dials on the business dash board
• Encouraging a philosophy of disciplined entrepreneurship is what makes businesses enjoy long-term sustainable futures. Public sector bodies must play an active role in spotting and supporting these stars of tomorrow.

Investment is all about making choices and taking risk but there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that these fast movers bring added value to North West plc. So, going forward, where should public sector invest its cash? In businesses that go nowhere or in those that have a real opportunity to make a difference?

September 2009: Bede Mullen, UCLan

This month marks the start of a new academic year at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and with the economy beginning to show the first signs of recovery, what better time than to reaffirm our commitment to business enterprise and innovation?

I believe passionately that universities should be proactively encouraging the transfer of their skills and knowledge into businesses and communities and taking on the role of standard bearers for wealth creation, regeneration and social development.

UCLan has recently bolstered its Student Employability and Enterprise Advisory Group with the appointment of Ilyas Munshi, CEO of Enterprise4All - a prestigious partnership which I’m sure will prove to be fruitful for us all.

Benefiting from the strength of referrals from Enterprise4All and its partner organisations, the University’s Knowledge Transfer Service has recently been awarded £30,000 of Innovation Vouchers from the NWDA to deliver bespoke training and consultancy services to a consortium of ten Black and Minority Ethnic businesses in the North West.

This adds to the success of the University as one of the top providers in the region, having been awarded no fewer than 38 Innovation Vouchers since the programme first launched in the North West in the autumn of 2008.

Innovation Vouchers give Lancashire businesses a fantastic opportunity to tap into the expertise residing within the region’s academic institutions. They have already been used to buy UCLan’s expertise in delivering business masterclasses, rebranding consultancy, research, web design and development services and new product testing.

These examples of collaborative Knowledge Transfer are just the tip of the iceberg because the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in Lancashire. UCLan is now actively supporting 126 graduate start-up businesses, employing 367 people, at its state-of-the-art Media Factory in Preston.

The latest Higher Education Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey placed the University second nationally and top in the North West for nurturing graduate enterprise. UCLan was also ranked top for the provision of training days to businesses in the region, with just short of 100,000 learner days being provided in 12 months.

Like all universities, UCLan’s future growth depends heavily on the continued development of the region’s economy and we must find ways of retaining our graduate talent within the county to allow it to flourish.

By working together in partnership with organisations like Enterprise4All and the NWDA, we can share our collective knowledge and expertise for the economic and social benefit of all our local communities.

If you know an enterprise which could benefit from the support available through UCLan’s Knowledge Transfer Service, give Enterprise4All a call and we’ll be happy to help!

Note:
Bede Mullen is Director of UCLan's Knowledge Transfer Service

Guest Column: Sir Bill Taylor

Times are not good!

Everyone must have been affected in some way by ‘the credit crunch that became a recession’ but whose fault it is and who should have seen it coming are almost moot points. This is not the time to wring your hands – or to sit on them.
This is the time to roll sleeves up. Waste time and energy playing the 'Blame Game' if you want to, but that just leads to a corrosive outbreak of "competitive suffering syndrome". We don't need fault finders; we need problem solvers!

When has business ever faced completely perfect and favourable conditions?

If, as a region, we’re going to turn our fortunes around, then we need creative, energetic leaders and teams of people. That way A) we'll get out of the recession sooner and B) we get out of it ready to do more business!

Working in difficult economic conditions, Enterprise4All helped a very impressive 901 new businesses to start trading under the NWDA's Business Start-Up initiative and helped a further 636 with post-start support. That's over a period of less than two years and in the face of almost unprecendented economic upheaval. And yet there it is: clear evidence that the spirit of enterprise is still strong in this region and that ordinary people are still committed to putting in plenty of hard work.

Enterprise4All and many other organisations are here to help. So get in touch!