Well-known as one of the first UK universities to establish large-scale entrepreneurship education, Nottingham’s early developments in this area can be traced back to the 1980s with the introduction of entrepreneurship modules in the School of Economics. From this largely theoretical approach significant developments in Entrepreneurship Education continued throughout the 1990s particularly in the growing MBA programmes, to the founding of the University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise and Innovation (UNIEI) in 1999.
Entrepreneurship Education is campus-wide and includes one of the most active UK student enterprise societies, Students into Free Enterprise (SIFE) who recorded four successive UK Championship victories from 2005 to 2008.For Martin Binks, Professor of Entrepreneurial Development,
“entrepreneurship has creative problem-solving and effective
decision-making at its heart. If ever we need those skills to
contribute to the health of our economy and society, it’s now!”
Equipped with these attributes, graduates can make real impact.
Nottingham embeds opportunities to study and experience entrepreneurship
across the curriculum and supports opportunities for students to be
entrepreneurial outside the formal curriculum. The University provides
extensive opportunities for students to develop their entrepreneurial
skills through one of the largest, most highly developed
Entrepreneurship Education programmes in Europe. Dedicated
undergraduate and Masters Degrees featuring entrepreneurship have been
developed across the University.
UNIEI has brought entrepreneurship education into the mainstream
curriculum: “All first year incoming students to the Nottingham
University Business School (NUBS) study Entrepreneurial Creativity
through the ‘Entrepreneurship and Business’ module that is also open to
students from across the University, timetable permitting. This module
focuses upon Entrepreneurial Creativity and Invention and by the end of
their first semester every Business School student will have been
mentored by local business people and entrepreneurs through the
‘Ingenuity’ creative problem-solving process and will have invented a
solution to a chosen problem.
The EnterpriseLab provides an environment for students, graduates and staff to learn about the practical aspects of business development, building entrepreneurial skills, exploring business ideas and networking with others who have similar aspirations.
Nottingham has a highly developed infrastructure for supporting innovation, intellectual property management, knowledge transfer and entrepreneurial activity among its staff. The Research Innovation Services team acts as a central gateway for businesses interest in identifying ways in which working with the University can benefit them. The University is partner in BioCity, Britain’s biggest biomedical business incubator. The UNIEI hosts one of the longest sector-specific entrepreneurship competitions, Biotechnology YES, which expanded in 2007-2008 to involve 318 postgraduates and postdocs, organised in 65 teams from 58 universities and seven institutes.
The Ingenuity Gateway developed by UNIEI connects a growing network of academics, students, entrepreneurs, businesses and public sector organisations to address “burning, real life, business questions” by applying current teaching and research to complex business challenges. In 2008, a collaborative Ingenuity ‘programme’ with the universities of Derby and Nottingham Trent gained £1 million from emda (the East Midlands Development Agency) to assist SME’s across the region.
For further information about the University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise and Innovation contact Director, Martin Binks on telephone 0115 951 5274 email martin.binks@nottingham.ac.uk.