London demonstrates a KEEN entrepreneurial spirit
London was the City leading the way for student entrepreneurship at the end of 2009 with four enterprising events, where teams eagerly participated in the Xing Business Challenge. London Metropolitan University, University of East London, Queen Mary, University of London and Ravensbourne held the exciting events, as part of the Knowledge East Enterprise Network (KEEN).
The Xing Business Challenge sees teams of students compete against each other in an intense day-long event. The event offers students an opportunity to build teams and share business ideas, whilst gaining a real sense of commercial awareness. The entrepreneurial students create and refine their business plan before pitching it to a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style panel of experts, including Julie Bangstrup, Vice President of the Gumball 3000 Group.
The four events saw eight Universities participate, 190 students competing and 20 high level business consultants who volunteered their time to advise the teams, including Guy Rigby, Smith and Williamson’s Head of Entrepreneurs.
Guy Rigby found the entrepreneurial spirit at London Met to be exemplary: ‘The students were inspirational, it was a fantastic afternoon, we had five excellent presentations on some really difficult topics and they didn’t have long to work on them, so I think they did fantastically well and I hope they’ll persist and become great entrepreneurs themselves.
The Xing Business Challenge is a really useful tool for students to learn the process of entrepreneurship. They had the experience and guidance from some experienced business people who’ve given valuable feedback to the students and hopefully it will help them work out how they can fine tune their planning in the future.’
Matthew Connelly, Student Enterprise Development Manager at London Metropolitan University reaffirmed how the Xing event supports young entrepreneurs: ‘The Xing event empowers students with an enterprising spirit and gives an insight in to the planning process involved in creating a new venture.’
28 January 2010