Welcome to the Make Your Mark campaign’s Enterprise Insights where only the most interesting enterprise developments and stories are delivered to you fortnightly.

Unlocking enterprise potential

NCEE Recommendations, NCEE (pdf: 0.5MB)

All primary and secondary schools in the UK should have relationships with business, according to a report by the influential National Council for Educational Excellence. The Council, composed of ministers, education and business leaders, suggests that young people benefiting from these engagements find ‘increased motivation and subject relevance, gain insights into the world of work, and increase their work-related and entrepreneurial skills’. They propose that these relationships should be facilitated by a National Framework, whereby businesses can identify where they can best engage with schools and colleges. Enterprise education should be ‘embedded in subjects across the curriculum’.

Real-world education and skills

Work-related learning for an innovation nation, NESTA (pdf: 0.5MB)

Exposure to enterprising and innovative business is essential in developing important skills and aptitudes in young people – and it can provide many benefits for businesses too, according to a report into work-related learning (WRL) by NESTA. The report supports ‘integrating WRL into other subjects’ and ‘the wider adoption of ‘Make Your Mark’ clubs’ as ways to encourage enterprise education. However, schools themselves should think laterally, encouraging non-traditional WRL, such as networking, and looking at new business areas, such as social enterprise, to reflect young peoples’ differing perspectives and motivations.

NESTA have also addressed the undervaluation of talent in fine arts graduates in their Art and innovation report (pdf: 2MB). Whilst the report identified that ‘the skills of fine arts graduates are of growing importance to the UK economy’, the suggestion was made that businesses are failing to recognise a substantial transferable skill set.
 

Driving up innovation in businesses

Innovation, science and the city, centre for cities (pdf: 3MB)

Government initiatives to increase innovation in key cities has produced mixed results in the delivery of its outcomes and in boosting regional economic growth, according to a report by the Centre for Cities. They argue that attention has been too focused upon business support and partnership, whilst neglecting infrastructural barriers to innovation. However, they also noted that in Newcastle and Birmingham the Science City initiative had had ‘a valuable catalytic effect, strengthening partnerships and sparking new activity’.
 

Creating enterprising places

Quarterly Economic Survey, British Chambers of Commerce(pdf: 0.4MB)

UK Businesses are reporting a collapse in confidence fuelled by record lows in turnover and profitability, according to a survey of small businesses in the manufacturing and services industries by the BCC. Citing comparisons with the early 1990s, they argue that whilst a moderate economic downturn may be unavoidable, a deeper effect may be avoidable if the government cuts interest rates and tackles financial problems in the banking sector.

An interim report by the Commission for Rural Communities has addressed the impact of the ‘credit crunch’ on rural businesses. Struggling to find investment, they argue, small businesses in particular have been forced to scale back; reducing overheads, advertising and moving out from incubation units to home operations.

In the media

Small businesses have been promised £25bn from the European Union in an effort to mitigate the effects of the credit crunch across different parts of the economy.

The first Enterprise Skills Academy has been launched by Dragons' Den entrepreneur Peter Jones, backed by £30m of government funding. Over 11,000 learners will be supported through courses at the academy during the next three years.

The Government has launched a review of employee engagement and skills in order to, ‘boost the economy through harnessing the full potential of employees’. The review, led by BERR, will make recommendations in early 2009.

Business and education leaders have joined together in the new ‘Higher Education Task Force’, launched by the CBI and to be lead by Sam Laidlaw, Chief Executive of Centrica. The groups first objective is to ‘consider how businesses and universities can work together to ensure that students develop the employability skills business needs’.

Foreign innovation and knowledge enhances, rather than challenges, UK prosperity and economic growth, according to a new thesis on globalised innovation by Harvard academic Amar Bide in his new book The Venturesome Economy.

Winners have been announced in the government-funded ‘Cracking Ideas’ competition aimed to stimulate innovative and enterprising ideas in primary school (Key Stage 2) aged children. Ideas included a device for untying shoelaces and a football-shaped vacuum cleaner designed to make housework more fun.
 

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