The winners of the 2009 Make Your Mark Enterprising Young Brits Awards were announced today (Tuesday 24 March 2009) at a very swanky ceremony at the Institute of Directors (IoD), London.
They were each presented with a trophy and £1,000 prize money by Chancellor Alistair Darling, who made time to chat to finalists and hear their positive stories.
A report on the World Entrepreneur Society’s 2009 Summit, from Make Your Mark Ambassador Vernon Kerswell.
I had the privilege to attend this event as a Make your Mark Ambassador. Dedicated to entrepreneurs, it was organised by the World Entrepreneur Society, held at the prestigious Goodenough College, London. The theme… “What keeps you awake at night?”
This event, now in its second year, was organised to bring together great minds to share, learn and celebrate enterprise. It was largely attended by entrepreneurs who had made it in their business. Executives rolling up for a prompt 9am start armed with their Blackberries and iPhones in hand, twittering as they went. It was also well attended by the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, some of whom had fledgling businesses and others who had just begun their journey. With a ticket price of £120 (£55 for students) it made this event even more exclusive, and for those just starting out, even in a recession, it was a good investment for those wanting to meet like minded people.
You know what we need more of? Great people doing great things.
People growing a global economy through knowledge sharing, fair trade initiatives and investment in community enterprises abroad.
People boosting our own economy through innovation and smart use of technology, creating local jobs, solving everyday problems and growing their business at an exponential rate.
Social entrepreneurs helping us to care for an improve our environment, and giving communities new opportunities whether they’re on farms or in film studios.
Inspiring young people using their passion for music, cinema and technology to make an impact no matter their age.
The winners of the Global Entrepreneurship Week competition, Unleash It, went along to their prize pow-wow with Raj Anand and the social networking geniuses at Kwiqq this week. The ACS (African Caribbean Society) sat down for a one on one with the team and they grabbed the guys to share their thoughts. Take a look…
Summary of the meeting with Kwiqq from Ugochukwu Obi on Vimeo.
Feedback on meeting from Raj COO @ Kwiqq from Ugochukwu Obi on Vimeo.
It’s been in the news recently that Cadbury’s is going fair trade. So what does this mean for the business - does switching to fair trade (for Dairy Milk bars and its hot drinks range) make it a social enterprise?
Doing a bit of research, I learned that the fair trade initiative means Cadbury will now pay a guaranteed minimum price for Ghanaian cocoa, even if the open market price falls below it. Social enterprise is different, as companies like Divine show. Through Divine’s social enterprise model, farmers also share in the profits and are involved in decision making as well as being guaranteed a minimum price.
It’s 9:30 in the morning in Kansas city and I am sitting between Virginia from Argentina and Jolia from Singapore. This is the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, generously hosted by our Global Entrepreneurship Week co-founders, The Kauffman Foundation.
Hosts of last November’s Global Entrepreneurship Week joined together from far and further away, battling the elements to make it to this truly global gathering. The storms have followed us from Chicago to Kansas City but the wind and the rain have been no match for the thunder and lightening unleashed by the 60 nations united in this room - 25,000 events and over 3 million participants during one Week - a stunning achievement by any standard, but when it comes to inspiration (for me)- it’s all in the detail.
Have you thought of being your own boss, of being an entrepreneur? Maybe you are an entrepreneur. Can you explain it in a video?
The European Commission is looking for videos that explore one of the following subjects: “The entrepreneurial spirit”, “Innovative Entrepreneurship”, “Responsible Entrepreneurship”
For the best video in each of the three categories the European Commission will award a prize of € 3,000, the second best video will be awarded € 2,000, the third best € 1,000.
The producers of the best videos will be invited to the opening event of the European week for small and medium sized enterprises on 6 May 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. Enter here.
Our US founder buddies of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Kauffman Foundation, have published their annual Thoughtbook. It’s sort of like an annual report… if annual reports were thought-provoking, profound, engaging and creative collections of essays, with contributions from Nobel Prize laureates and jam makers extraordinaire.
If you’re interested in learning vs education, the evolution of capitalism, visionary science and big entrepreneurial ideas, not to mention jam, you’ll find loads of stuff that’s worth a read. The Thoughtbook takes a broad definition of enterprise as innovation, action and passion. There’s a line I really like in Gordon Brown’s essay on Building Enterprise Cultures Worldwide. The PM quotes John Stuart Mill’s definition of enterprise as “the desire to keep moving… to be trying and accomplishing new things for our own benefit or that of others.”
Don’t take my word for it (hey I work here) but check out a lovely blog from one of our ambassadors Raj Anand which includes this rather cool pic…
Chocs away
Raj is a fine example of one of our brilliant ambassadors - he spreads the good word about enterprise on social media in particular, he ran a competition in Global Entrepreneurship Week and is supporting Make Your Mark with a Tenner. An all round good egg!
A new research report from our friends in the US, the Kaufmann Foundation, suggests that men-owned business are more successful that women-owned businesses. After two years surveying 5000 businesses they found that women-owned businesses had lower survival rates, lower size, growth, earnings and profits. They suggest a few reasons why this might be the case;
- Access to credit (62% of women-owned businesses started with less than $25k, compared with 55% of men-owned; a higher percentage of women have low credit scores)
- Lifestyle businesses (women may be starting businesses as a lifestyle choice)
Trust.
A word with only 5 letters and yet it is such a BIG word.
We are all living in a time where trust is one of the most important elements of human interaction. Let’s face it - do you trust the banks any more, or big corporations? I remember growing up in an era where my parent’s generation did not think to question their doctors, or other people in authority as the trust was automatic; whereas nowadays we are all having to become mini-experts in the things that affect our lives as we don’t have as much unquestioning trust in what we are told. Trust in 2009 has to be earned.
Are people in the UK properly equipped to communicate with non-English speaking visitors from overseas?
Are young brits interested in learning different languages?
How many languages can you speak?
Regional Language Network London is an organisation that works hard to encourage people to use languages to communicate effectively with each other and the rest of the world. It also promotes language and cultural skills for businesses and communities across the capital.
RNL London presented the following challenge on Unleash It -
In 2009 WinWeb will celebrate it’s 15th anniversary by hosting a Business’09 Competition to win £10,000 or an equivalent currency value for small business owners or budding start up business entrepreneurs.
Make Your Mark are supporting this excellent initiative and recommend that you take a look at the details below.
All that is required is that you let WinWeb know what you would do with the money for your business. Would you start your dream business? Start a business from home? Invest it in your current business and finish a long planned project?
The Challenge: take a random object (this year’s competition was about water bottles) and increase its value by adding something to it - anything - that is creative, imaginative, and innovative.
The result: watch this video from a film studies team in Scotland, who decided to add comedy to water bottles.
For more information on the Stanford Innovation Tournament, an official Global Entrepreneurship Week activity, check out the website.
Last Thursday saw the Make Your Mark “roving” laptop enter Bescot Stadium in Walsall… Myself and Cheryl (and our trolley) took up our place at the Business Start Up and Growth Show where we attempted to get visitors to log onto our Unleashing Ideas website and post their business problems.
Many contacts were made throughout the day and we managed to get a few photos with one of our West Mids ambassadors Jo Cameron (some of you might recognise her from Series 1 of The Apprentice!).
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