Student and Graduate Enterprise

Loughborough Students in Free Enterprise team helps tackle social issues through enterprise and makes a difference in the community while helping you develop the skills to become a socially responsible business leader.
Read more about SIFE at Loughborough
Visit Loughborough Students in Free Enterprise website

Loughborough Students’ Union has clubs and societies run by students for students. There are a number of clubs that offer plenty of opportunities to meet like-minded students and boost your business skills and job prospects. You can also get involved in Action Group projects that benefit the local community.
Visit Loughborough Students’ Union website

Young Enterprise East Midlands offers opportunities to work as a business volunteer in the region to inspire young people and equip them with business skills.
Visit Young Enterprise East Midlands website

Most of our departments offer undergraduate work placement (sandwich) degrees, allowing you to combine valuable industrial or professional experience with your academic studies. As well as boosting your career prospects and your confidence, you’ll earn a salary (typically £14-16,000).

Visit the sandwich placements website

Organised by Loughborough University, Graduate Gateway hand picks graduates for local businesses to carry out a 26-week assignment. All assignments are self-contained, graduate level and geared to delivering real results. You will be given a significant level of responsibility which will really help enhance your career prospects.

Visit the Graduate Gateway website

The University also operates a Knowledge Transfer Partnerships scheme which places postgraduate research students in companies for one to three years to boost product development, business expansion and performance improvements. 

Visit the Knowledge Transfer Partnership website

MyKindaCrowd turns your ideas into rewards. You can win gadgets, prizes, work-experience, cash and even jobs. Companies set challenges, you come up with ideas and get rewarded. It can even help your CV. Whatever you're interested in there's a challenge for you. Get recognised and get rewarded.

Find out more at the website.

The aim of the New Entrepreneurs Foundation is to create a new generation of outstanding entrepreneurs who will play a role in Britain's future growth and prosperity and create new market-leading businesses.

The Foundation will give 25 of the UK's brightest, entrepreneurially minded young people the opportunity to work for a year with some of the country's leading entrepreneurs.

The Foundation has been set up to create year-long internships for up to 30 of the UK's brightest, entrepreneurially minded young adults from a range of backgrounds with leading entrepreneurs.

The programme is open to final year students, recent graduates and non-graduates who can demonstrate a keen interest in becoming a successful entrepreneur. Throughout the application process, the foundation will be looking for participants to demonstrate drive and ambition.

Technology skills and experience of starting a business already will also be highly desirable. Applications for 2013/3014 will open in February 2013.

The programme will last 12 months and everyone on the programme will receive a basic scholarship salary from their host entrepreneur company. This will amount to £20,000 a year for those in London and £16,000 a year if placed outside London.

Additional scholarship funding to assist with living costs may be available on a case-by-case basis.

View the website here

Visit the website to view this year's winners.

SGEC is a global business plan challenge hosted by the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School. It is more than just a competition; based on the quality of an initial one-page business plan, applicants will receive mentorship and guidance from the University of Oxford's business students and alumni to help grow their ideas into practical 10-page business plans.

These business plans will be entered into a final competition where winners will be selected from six global regions. For further information, visit the website.

This national competition pits postgraduate research students and post-doctoral researchers from across the country against one another, giving them the skills and knowledge to commercialise their inventions.

Finalists get to stay in a hotel for three days and nights for an intensive residential workshop, culminating in a Dragon's Den style pitch. The competition typically takes place in June with a first prize of £2,000. Loughborough’s team, Grey Matter, picked up second prize in 2011 in a competition of over 60 teams from throughout the UK.

Organised by Lloyds TSB Commercial and supported by the National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs (NACUE), the Awards offer prize packages to help nurture and grow your business including:
An overall cash investment of £50,000 to the national best enterprise
Cash investment prizes of up to £5,000 in the initial heats
Enhanced mentoring support packages at regional and national level
Business networking and promotional opportunities.
Read about this year's winners at the:
Lloyds TSB Enterprise Awards website

Running monthly since January 2009, the Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Awards offer up to 4 prizes of £1,000 no-strings attached funding. You must be aged 16-30 (inclusive), based in the UK, and your business must have have been trading for less than 1 year.

Shell LiveWIRE website »

BBC Three are looking for entrepreneurs now!

Apply for your slice of Richard Reed's investment fund, up to £1m available. The application process is open for a limited time so if you’ve got a great business idea apply asap.

Richard Reed, co-founder of innocent Drinks, has up to £1million that he is making available to entrepreneurs with brilliant business ideas. He wants to give the next generation of Great British entrepreneurs a helping hand in getting started.

To take part in this exciting new BBC Three TV series, you need to be over 18 and have either started a small business or have a great idea.

Our twitter is: @BYOBoss_BBC3
Facebook page

Be Your Own Boss website »

UnLtd's Millenium Awards offer a range of opportunities to support innovative projects from social entrepreneurs. Individuals or informal groups can apply for Level One awards (typically £2,000) to help with the running costs of the project. Awards are typically given out in the Spring and the Autumn.

UnLtd website »

Student and Graduate enterprise events including workshops and forums featuring entrepreneurs, competitions are managed by Marina Pickles, the Student Enterprise Manager.

Based in the Enterprise Office, Marina can help you assess the commercial potential of any innovative business ideas and offers advice about how to protect and develop your idea, where to find funding to help grow your business. Marina and her colleagues can also provide advice on patents, copyright, trademarks, design rights, and confidentiality issues. Marina also coordinates the Business Clinics.

Learn more about Entrepreneurship and IP Commercialisation
An online course suitable for academics and post graduate researchers interested in finding out more about Entrepreneurship and IP Commercialisation is available via the University's Learn site. (requires log-in to Learn)

Speak one-to-one with business experts and consultants about any business queries at our free-of-charge monthly clinics.

Topics covered during these half-hour slots include Tax, Insurance, IP, Finance, and Investment. Clinics take place from 1-3pm, at Meeting Room C, Students Union and must be booked in advance. You must complete our disclosure form in advance in order to protect your idea.

Student and graduate project disclosure form

Make It Happen
The National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (NCGE) aims to raise the profile of entrepreneurship and the option of starting your own business as a career choice amongst students and graduates. Its goal is to influence, and inspire, and increase in the number of students and graduates who give serious thought to self-employment or business start-up. As part of the council's Make It Happen programme, the organisation is running a series of webinars offering live, interactive support for new businesses.
Find out more and register.

The Glendonbrook Centre for Enterprise Education, based in the School of Business and Economics, is our ‘hub’ for accredited enterprise education activity. It coordinates all departmental enterprise education as well as delivering some stand-alone modules, workshops and courses for undergraduates and postgraduates. The Centre has been established thanks a £1million gift to the University by one of the East Midlands’ leading businessmen, Lord Glendonbrook (formerly Sir Michael Bishop).

We've compiled a list of PDF sheets to help students and graduates that are interested in innovation and enterprise.

• Protecting IP
• types-of-business
• Types of IP copyright
• Types of IP designs
• Types of IP patents
• Types of IP trade marks
• What is IP

Business advice websites

• Business Link
• How Stuff Works (insight into business management)
• Real Business (insight and advice for small businesses)
• Santander: Starting your own business (business advice)
• Startups (new business advice)
• The Bigger Idea (inspirational resource for creatives)

Patent / invention websites

• British Inventors Society
• Intellectual Property Office

Social enterprise websites

• Changemakers (unlocking leadership potential in young people)
• Can (network offering events, office space)
• i-genius (network offering business development courses)
• National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education
• School for Social Entrepreneurs
• Social Enterprise Training and Support
• Social Enterprise Live (online magazine)
• UnLtd (charity for social entrepreneurs)

Loughborough University websites

• Careers and Employability Centre
• Commercialisation Studio (for Loughborough University’s creative graduates)
• Loughborough Innovation Centre
• Loughborough University Enterprise (working with business)

Regional networks

• Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce