INSIGHTS / News

SETsquared, the enterprise partnership of the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey held the first event to support its Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) teams at its Bath Innovation Centre on 30th November 2011.

Over thirty socially-enterprising students who lead the partnership’s five University SIFE teams gathered to share good ideas and seek advice on overcoming business and enterprise problems.

Having teams at diverse stages of development help all the teams to reflect on what they did well and what they could do better. This year, teams from both Bristol and Exeter entered SIFE for the first time, while the Southampton team are the current UK SIFE champions.

This SIFE team gathering was the start of a full year of SETsquared Partnership student enterprise collaborations. Other events include:

• Business plan pitching at Deloitte’s HQ in London;
• Xing! business plan challenge at the University of Exeter;
• Surrey and Bristol Enterprise ‘boot-camps’;
• The 2nd annual Student Enterprise Awards evening.

One student confirmed: “Best practice sharing amongst the teams was useful and fostered a spirit of co-operation. As each team endures very similar problems this was particularly beneficial.”

The students and their staff advisors were facilitated by SIFE UK’s programme manager, Nadia Weigh and executive director, Jim Ineson.

Jim Ineson said: “We know from experience the great benefit the teams receive from best-practice sharing, and on this occasion there was such a wide mix of experience, from our national champion team to the newest rookie team, that it was especially valuable.”

“We can’t wait to see the results achieved when the teams present their projects at our National Competition in April,” said Ineson.