December 26, 2018, by The Ingenuity Lab

Growing your Business Idea: The Ingenuity Competition

Ingenuity19 is looking for the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators to create scalable social and commercial enterprises that can transform Nottingham, the UK and beyond.

For the first time, we are open to the public and looking for future leaders from across the city. This includes everyone from the student community, to Nottingham’s biggest businesses, as well as those from the public and third sectors. We are looking for everyone to come together and discover problems worth solving, and are offering you the tools to create scalable sustainable solutions.

As Skills and Development Manager in the Business School my main role is to work with students on developing their professional and academic skills. Preparing them not only to do well on their degrees but to also helping them to research and achieve their career goals.

From my own personal development point of view,  working with a group of colleagues to set up and run our own business: Flourish International Women’s Development http://flourish.international/ , an organisation whose vision is to see women and girls at every stage in their lives fulfil their potential and realise their dreams, enables me to bring some authenticity to my lectures. Although we already had a great deal of expertise and knowledge regarding setting up and running a business through my colleagues other businesses,  Ingenuity18 helped to reinforce and develop my own perspective on the skills required to set up and develop a business. Going through the Ingenuity18 process enabled me to consolidate my own understanding and refresh and update my personal business skills, as well as identifying any gaps, which the Ingenuity process has helped to support.

For someone starting from an initial idea the Ingenuity competition has a great deal of information and support to take that initial idea and to help to develop and grow it. Ingenuity18 provided a series of workshops that covered all aspects of business, from original concept, marketing, communication to  finance and legal aspects, giving guidance and support from entrepreneurs in residence with key experiences to share.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the competition was having the opportunity through the weekend of working on a specific sustainability task, the opportunity of working with students and alumni, sharing ideas, seeing how groups worked together and finding out about other entrepreneurial ideas was exciting and thought provoking. I would really recommend this experience to other staff in the university; it is a great opportunity to work with other staff and students and to learn together providing a very different insight and experience.

It’s time to innovate and shape our futures; register for Ingenuity19 now: http://bit.ly/Ingenuity19

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