TEESSIDE University will be hosting a major event for budding businesses on Thursday.
The visitors will be the National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs and Lloyds Banking Group, who have teamed up as part of a nationwide consultation exercise involving 10 of Britain’s most business-facing universities to get the views of students and graduate entrepreneurs on enterprise, entrepreneurship and university incubation services.
Teesside’s graduate business incubation centre has helped to launch over 300 new businesses, creating over 600 jobs since it began a decade ago - with many of the new enterprises coming out of the Univeristy’s DigitalCity Fellowship scheme.
NACUE and Lloyds Banking Group will be running a series of interviews, focus groups and enterprise forums - complemented by an online survey directed towards student and graduate entrepreneurs.
Last year, Teesside University and its Students’ Union launched a campus-wide programme called entrepreneurs@tees to promote the idea of starting a business to students from day one of their studies at Teesside. The programme encourages students to develop skills and knowledge relevant to both enterprise and wider employability.
Prof Cliff Hardcastle, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) at Teesside University, said: “We are delighted that NACUE has selected us to be part of their research into university enterprise and business support. Teesside has a fantastic reputation in this area and is recognised regionally and nationally for its success in helping students turn great ideas into businesses. We have very ambitious plans to do even more in this area and are working hard behind the scenes at the moment on a new initiative called entrepreneurs@tees which will allow any of our students who are interested to get involved in enterprise activities.”