Our pioneering Head of Women’s Enterprise has been shortlisted for the First Women Awards in the public service category. The First Women Awards recognize women who are trailblazers and pioneers in business and women whose achievements and individual actions have helped and are helping to remove barriers and open up opportunities for others to follow.
It is certainly an honour to be recognised along with some of the most pioneering women in British business and public life today (including Freesat managing director, Emma Scott, the “first woman of free TV, Chief Constable and Julie Spence, president of the Association for Women in policing).
GWIIN (Global Women Inventor and Innovators Network) recognises the good work that organisations are doing for the benefit of many women inventors and innovators. As a result, this year they are selecting a few organisations and presenting them with the GWIIN Organisation ‘Special Recognition’ Award. Make Your Mark will receive one of these along with 10 other companies from all over the globe! MYM receives this award for the invaluable support and assistance that we provide many exceptionally creative and innovative women.
A pat on the back for the Make Your Mark Campaign team & Spark: The National Women’s Enterprise Ambassador Network!!!
Recently I was hugely honoured to have fronted the ‘IDEAS MASH UP’ competition for MAKE YOUR MARK…
The clever team at MAKE YOUR MARK took one of the success tips contained in my latest book ‘IDEAS MAN’ and turned it into a thrilling contest where students from around Britain had to combine two (normally separate) ideas together to create a brand new, and very exciting, business concept. The prize for the winning entry was a whopping £2,000, more than enough to get most ideas to the next stage so that they can attract a partner or the investment to launch to market.
At the weekend I was asked to participate at The Enterprise Show, Leeds, which was an event hosted by Business Link as a ‘one stop shop’ for people with a business idea, to attend and get all the information they need to get their business off the ground.
As a Make Your Mark Ambassador, I’m often asked to do things like this. This is me at the start of the day:
Video 1 at the shows
During the course of the day I was so busy speaking to the people who stopped by my stand, that I completely forgot to do any video blogging, so this is me ’rounding up’ at the end!
UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) is proud to support the launch of Diaspora, the non-profit music foundation that will aim to ensure equality in music exists for everyone at Rich Mix in Bethnal Green on Tuesday 31st March 2009.
Chaired by UKTI’s International Business Specialist for the Music Industry and Diaspora ‘fellow’ Phil Patterson, the event will involve a panel of representatives from music associations and trade bodies across London.
This panel has been selected from some of London’s best musical minds in response to the needs of an audience including upcoming artists, record labels and music organisations who have the potential to become leaders within the music industry.
Well, as for all the negative press and comments about recessions and credit crunches, at the Women in Business event attended by fourteen entrepreneurs and MP, Yvette Cooper in Castleford today there wasn’t a single moan or groan in sight, just positive comments and the most tremendous inspirational stories.
Each person around the table had a different tale to tell and what made it more interesting was that they were so varied and in some cases sparked off a round of giggles – from recession busting ‘oldies’ to decisions between marrying a rich man or getting a job – the job won!
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.
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.”
I regularly run sessions to come up with new ideas and over the years have found a few good ways to do this. Here’s my guide (with all sorts of bits and pieces stolen from other places originally!).
The spirit of creative sessions
Make them open
No blackhatting - no idea is a bad idea at this stage
All ideas are welcomed
Don’t expect to come up with the perfect solution - that almost always comes at a later stage outside this session
As a facilitator of creative sessions, you should:
Waking up to snow on Monday I was both excited (hey it’s not every day we get to play in 8 inches of snow) and disappointed because I didn’t want it to dampen enthusiasm for Make Your Mark with a Tenner - our fab new enterprise initiative.
So I decided to combine the two (snow + tenner - was that an Ideas Mashup oh yes) and set a challenge for people to create a Tenner-related snowman. The challenge was set to MYM staff and also via Twitter, where we have 400+ followers all desperate to make a snowman no doubt.
Today whilst collecting my 6 year old daughter from school, I thought about this question and whether the most enterprising ideas come from a ‘Eureka’ moment or gritted teeth?
To fill you in, I’m up in beautiful Yorkshire - well it usually is beautiful but today it’s raining and snowing! This was the reason for my gritted teeth but it did give me an enterprising idea…
Mikey Naylor, from Selby High School, had a great time this week when he and nine of his mates went to visit Xing, a smoothie company in Hull.
Having launched a competition to ask students to come up with a great name for a brand new smoothie, Mikey put forward the winning idea - ‘Yum yum, healthy tum’ giving him and his friends the chance to spend a day with the smoothie entrepreneurs.
Not only were the team able to ask questions about the company and how it all started they also got the chance to whiz up their very own tasty treats – our tummies are rumbling at the thought!
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?
I’ve just been reading the latest summary of the Trend Watch briefing, which highlights some trends for 2009.
Number one trend is NICHETRIBUTES, which are attributes / features or additions to existing products, making them more practical for specific user groups. An example is ‘Dots Gloves‘ - knit gloves with metal dots on the fingertips that won’t scratch iPhones, iPods or other touch-screen phones or devices. Hopefully our Ideas MashUp activity for colleges will unearth some of these nichetributes!
Number two is Luxyoury - which is about the consumer defining luxury.
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