Businesses given best advice on starting up

May 22 2008 By The Journal

ENTREPRENEURS are getting a step up with the help of an innovative and ever expanding business centre. The North East Business and Innovation Centre (BIC) assists with the development of hundreds of new companies each year.

In the last 12 months alone, advisers have worked alongside entrepreneurs to set up a wide range of businesses, from photography studios and employment agencies, to media producers and healthcare providers.

However, helping businesses to start up is only one in a range of services available from the North East BIC, and only a segment in the story of how the organisation has developed in parallel with its clients as an extremely successful North East-based SME.

In the last five years the BIC has created four unique divisions, which now run seamlessly alongside the accommodation facilities and business start-up services that it has built itself on since establishing in 1994.

Big Ideas, set up in 2003, is a facility designed specifically to help stimulate innovation and enterprise.

Developed with support from One NorthEast, the Tyne and Wear Partnership, the Learning and Skills Council and Tyne and Wear Education Business Link Organisation (TWEBLO), the experts from Big Ideas work with businesses and schools region-wide, as well delivering the Big Ideas ICT Youth Challenge – a unique ICT competition for young people in the North East.

The BIC was also instrumental in the development of Design Right Solutions (DRS).

Established in 2004, and based on site at the BIC, DRS specialise in new product development, delivering a complete service from initial concept work, through pre-production prototypes, to a full project management service and product development process. Recently, the BIC’s IT department has relaunched as CAT42 after the team won a succession of regional contracts for high-profile organisations.

With more than 20 years of experience and a policy of continuous staff development, the organisation continues to provide IT support to BIC tenants, as well as a host of external customers throughout the region. In addition, the BIC’s marketing support department has also relaunched itself commercially, after five hugely successful years of providing services for business start-up clients.

Pulse Creative Marketing delivers a range of services including design and print, market research, public relations, web design and strategic marketing.

Then there is the accommodation – some of the North East’s greatest business success stories of recent years, including the Leighton Group, Mediaprom, International Acceptance and VisiTech have started life on-site at the BIC.

David Howell, director of operations at the North East BIC, said: “Unswerving commitment to the development of the region, combined with our skilled individuals being given the opportunity to develop their own enterprises through divisions, is the true key to success at the North East BIC, and as always, we strive to pass this on to the constant flow of SMEs that we support.”

For more information on the North East BIC, contact David Howell on (0191) 516-6020, or visit www.ne-bic.co.uk