Press Release

5 Northwest Enterprise Champions on the way

Thursday, August 21 2008

The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) can reveal that five Universities in the region will receive funding to establish Enterprise Champions, helping graduates to be more enterprising and potentially become successful entrepreneurs.

The NWDA has approved £930,000 towards the project that will help increase the number of students/graduates developing an idea into a business opportunity. The Enterprise Champion will offer encouragement, guidance and practical support to students and graduates who show entrepreneurial ideas and commitment, providing them with the opportunity to explore the possibility of turning these ideas into real profit making enterprises.

The Northwest will initially have 5 Enterprise Champions building on the key lessons learnt from the existing Enterprise Champion at Liverpool John Moores University who will provide a key role in debriefing additional faculties and institutions.

The Agency is also investigating opportunities to increase the number of universities that could be involved in the future.

This new funding from the NWDA will extend this best practice model by establishing 5 permanent champions, to cover the geographic range of the region’s universities, including; The University of Liverpool, University of Salford, University of Cumbria, Manchester Metropolitan University and the ongoing development of the project at Liverpool John Moores University.  

Steven Broomhead, Chief Executive of the NWDA said: "We have an enterprise gap in the Northwest, we need more business start ups to help reach the national average and help boost our GVA. This exciting project will support fresh ideas at an early stage and encourage our graduates to take their entrepreneurial plans forward to profit making businesses."

The Enterprise Champions will help support and promote graduate start ups and their role will aim to influence policy makers in Northwest universities to establish supportive frameworks and environments within which enterprise and entrepreneurship can flourish; encourage an enterprise culture by raising awareness, motivation and insight into entrepreneurial opportunities and motivate students toward considering entrepreneurship as a career or life option.

The project is delivered nationally by the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (NCGE) who have the national lead for this type of activity, with the financial support from the NWDA to roll this out in the region.