lep.co.uk
lepbusinessreview2009
Evening Post, Tuesday, January 27, 2009
37
COMMERCE&EDUCATION ETHNICMINORITYBUSINESSFORUM&UNIVERSITYOFCENTRALLANCASHIRE
Entrepreneurs among ethnic business people
by KHALID SAIFULLAH relationship manager at Business Link North West and a member of the regional Ethnic Minoroty Business Forum
W
hile every time we switch on the television or log on to the internet, the news is of doom and gloom for all industries, on the ground there is a growing entrepreneurial spirit within the North West. In my role as a relationship manager with Business Link North West, I am seeing this growth and there are certain ethnic minority groups, particularly the South Asian and Chinese communities, where this entrepreneurialism is strong. It is because of this that when we came to the point of considering postponing the Ethnic Minority Business Forum North West annual awards in March, we decided to press ahead. Because, while there are challenging times facing all businesses, both now and in the future, we wanted to show that there is still life out there and that entrepreneurialism needs to be rewarded. We all recognise the challenges but many people out there in the North West business community will see that as an opportunity rather than a reason to put a stop to things. Recession can breed many things and entrepreneurial spirit is one of the more positive aspects. We may well see a lot of people in the ethnic minority communities and beyond leaving their jobs in the next year, including some of our biggest and best-known employers, but I believe this could also be the breeding ground for the big businesses of the next ten years. Through Business Link North West there is a lot of support available, both financial and advice, which is tackling the root cause of this recession – a lack of access to finance. My fellow relationship managers and I are seen as the eyes and ears on the ground for government, feeding back real-time information about how its reaction to the recession is working, or not working. Generally speaking I think people accept that the quick and decisive response taken has been the right way forward but equally they recognise things will not happen overnight. We may well have to wait a further six or 12 months before the impact of interest rate cuts, VAT cuts and the other measures taken nationally start to show rewards. The second annual EMBFNW awards will take place at the Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester on Thursday, March 12, go to www.embfawards.co.uk for further details.
SCREEN GRAB: The UCLan Media Factory features a nine-metre wide computer projection screen to help stimulate debate
UCLan will be ‘business-facing’
by Nick Lancaster, deputy director of Knowledge Transfer at the University of Central Lancashire
F
OR as long as universities have been going the voices of business have been screaming loud. They have wanted to know what we can do to support them, and in today’s climate of a country entering a recession, those voices are louder than ever. At the University of Central Lancashire in Preston we are listening more than ever about what we can do to help them now. One crucial way we can do that is to ensure our graduates are making an immediate impact. There has been a notion that it takes a graduate time to embed themselves into the world of work. To do this we are not only giving those students the education they need, we are giving them the ‘soft skills’ through schemes like our work placement programmes which we believe help us create graduates who are job-ready for whatever industry they choose to go into. On top of that we help through schemes like Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and Innovation Voucher Schemes, which are both government schemes, whereby we get grad-
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uates to go into businesses to look at solving problems and making companies more efficient. The key thing to remember about any downturn is that it will always be followed by an upturn and schemes like these are ways of ensuring businesses are prepared to be in the best possible situation for when that upturn comes. In the last year, UCLan has undergone a number of transformations, most notably our Media Factory which is not only a hub for a number of our business programmes, it is also an incubation unit for small businesses in the area. We do aim to be as ‘business-facing’ as we can through facilities like the Media Factory and through projects targeting specific business sectors we are aiming to stimulate the economy in areas such as digital media, advanced manufacturing and design. I can say the bricks and mortar of the university are likely to stay the same as they are today, but we aim to make the most of the vast array of skills we have here at UCLan both in our staff and our graduate population.
We aim to make the most of the vast array of skills we have here at UCLan both in our staff and our graduate population