If you had the backing of a leading enterprise charity, four major business organisations and a highly successful entrepreneur, what ideas would you put forward to make the UK a world leader in enterprise?
Enterprise UK, its Chair Peter Jones, the Institute of Directors, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Confederation of British Industry, and the Federation of Small Businesses are launching a collaborative manifesto for entrepreneurship. It is an online space where entrepreneurs from any industry sector, geographical region or stage of business development can submit and rate innovative and practical enterprise policy ideas.
Well according to Ganesh Selvarajah, an adviser at the government-backed business support service Business Link, the holy grail for small retailers is knowing how to target new customers. He directly answers a question about this on the BBC website and he makes some interesting suggestions to one small business owner about the demographics of the area they live in, and the potential of targeting the Eastern European community.
As a marketeer by profession I probably spend more time than most thinking about audiences – both potential audiences and those which aren’t worth bothering about which is equally important to consider.
Last week I managed to bag myself a ticket to the media140 Third Sector event held at We Are Social in London. The event focused on how Social Media is and can be used in third sector organisations with talk and debate from leading advocates in the industry. Safe to say being a bit of a social media geek I lapped up the opportunity to engage with like minded thinkers and was interested to see how charities and organisations across the spectrum of size and notoriety approached this. Here were some of things I took away..
A NEW chapter is set to unfold in Sunderland’s maritime history as the first of a new generation of wave-powered energy generators sets sail.
The first tidal generator to be manufactured at the site of the city’s former shipbuilding yards is now complete and will be shipped to Humberside where it will be put into action in a series of trials.
The million-pound Neptune Proteus tidal stream demonstrator has been built on Wearside by family- run Wear Dock and Engineering.
There were some confused faces around the Nissan Manufacturing Plant yesterday as their site was invaded by a Polar Bear! Lucky for them this one was harmless and in fact wanted nothing more than to tell them all about Global Warming and protecting the environment.
Percy the Polar Bear is the main character in a series of locally set books developed by Northumberland Church of England School. The books use familiar local surroundings to hammer home the importance of looking after the places we love living in for the next generation.
Inspired by Global Entrepreneurship Week a group of UK entrepreneurs have decided to sell the world’s first 24 Hour Start Up on ebay! From 12.00 today a yet to be created business was listed for sale that will continue to develop over the next 24 hours.
Nonsense London and White October have given themselves a day to create a business from scratch. A crack team of sleep-deprived entrepreneurs. creatives, designers and developers will be conceiving, designing, developing and branding a web-based business. which they’ve listed for auction on eBay.
It is a common misconception that you need to have a great, unique idea before you start your business journey. In actual fact, you don’t.
Allow me to use the analogy of a doctor to illustrate. A doctor will go to medical school for perhaps 6 years or more. The first years of study will entail learning all about medicine, the human body, biology and patient care. In fact, aspiring doctors will learn every fundamental area and principle of medicine during that time. It is only in the final years that doctors really start to know what they want to specialise in. They spend the first few years learning the fundamentals.
North East school children were working hard yesterday thinking of innovative ideas to market Newcastle United football tickets for Grade C matches during the long winter months in the Championship.
Students at King Edward VI in Morpeth were busy coming up with Loyalty Card schemes, competitions, concerts, BOGOF offer ideas, all in order to answer the brief set by Sam McLoughlin in his Enterprise Academy Challenge!
Children in a number of cities across the UK are taking part in this challenge to come up with the most creative ideas to market and sell tickets to the matches which traditionally don’t sell out, whether this is due to poor opposition or during the run up to Christmas.
I want to be rich! I want freedom! I hate my job! These are some of the most common reasons we hear for starting a business…
Why do we want to become entrepreneurs? What is it that we want? Why do we want to risk so much and actually go it alone? What is it that drives us, is it money, freedom, fame, that feeling of significance?
On one hand it is all of the above, but on the other, how do we actually define exactly what those things are?
Gary’s Social Media Count is a real time visualisation of social media’s ever-bubbling growth. Spend a few seconds staring at these flickering stats and you’ll realise why few entrepreneurs can afford to ignore its potential.
What a great idea – David from Southport has put his life savings into an invention which I’m sure most people would say was very innovative! The ‘balloon hanger’ allows you to hand multiple balloons at once without fear of pinging elastic and escaping plastic. He quit his job as an ambulance driver last year to make it happen and has signed a deal with an American company. Good luck David!
Their are some very interesting views on this one in the Make Your Mark Forum, to find out what they are join in and have your say. From Rhianna umbrellas to Bill Oddie Binoculars.
Join in on the forum and wet your entreprenuerial appetitie with topics from your big idea to being networked.
Everything that we do as a campaign has a location associated with it. Events happen somewhere, ambassadors are based somewhere, schools are somewhere. With the march of technology comes geo-tagging, so even the photos we take when we’re social reporting can be tagged with a precise location.
Over the next few months we’ll be testing the transformative potential of maps and geolocation for the Make Your Mark.
Of course, we’ve done maps before such as our recent Make Your Mark with a Tenner map. The lens of location could be a great way for us to pull together different parts of our campaign and visualise their impact; a kind of positive countermap to the jobless map of Britain.
– “MOVERS & CHANGERS” CHALLENGES STUDENTS TO ADDRESS SOCIAL ISSUES WITH CREATIVE BUSINESS IDEAS FOR $25,000 PRIZE –
– MTVU PROFILES FINALISTS IN NEW SERIES PREMIERING NOVEMBER 23RD –
New York, NY – August 20, 2009 – MTV’s 24-hour college network mtvU and NYSE Euronext (NYX) today launched “Movers & Changers,” a nationwide challenge to uncover the country’s next social entrepreneurs who are poised to make a positive impact on society through their innovative business concepts.
Bloggers Circle has alerted me to an interesting blog about luck, and reminds us of the scene in the latest Harry Potter film where Harry pretends to slip some felix felicis in Ron’s drink, to boost his morale before an important Quidditch match. Ron plays perfectly, embued with near-magical powers by his mental state:
The blog also asks whether some people attract more luck than others. Personally I think you make your own luck, but that you can’t always control what will happen to you.
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