Guest editorial

Citation

Robertson, M. and Collins, A. (2003), "Guest editorial", Education + Training, Vol. 45 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2003.00445faa.001

Guest editorial

About the Guest EditorsMartyn Robertson is Head and Amanda Collins is Project Manager, both at Business Start-Up@Leeds Met, Leeds Business School, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK.

The UK government's emphasis in recent years on capability, skills, widening participation and the establishment of links between education and business has encouraged the development of higher education initiatives aimed at enabling as many young people as possible to achieve their goals. Enterprise spans all of these key themes and, more importantly, is a critical factor in the development of the economy. The government, through its regional development agencies, has created funds to educate students about starting their own business and, more generally, to embrace creativity and innovation. Business Start-Up has been created to fulfil this goal at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.

Business Start-Up@Leeds Met's ultimate aim is to enable students to develop their ideas and to facilitate their transformation into business ventures. We encourage innovation in the form of new products, together with social entrepreneurship, as well as commercial enterprise. Together with the Universities of Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield, in a West Yorkshire Partnership, Business Start-Up is playing a critical role in achieving enterprise objectives. The partnership's aim is to enable at least 200 companies to start up, create in excess of 250 jobs, provide more than 700m² of pre-incubator and incubator workspace and over 3,400 enterprise learning opportunities.

Business Start-Up has always been externally funded and consequently started small in 2000. The academic concerned began by embedding modules in enterprise within the faculty of business. In 2002 he used the funding to swell his ranks to four, which allowed us to market the Business Start-Up brand beyond the faculty to other parts of the University. A CD-ROM was researched and developed to fill the gaps in enterprise provision. Extra-curricular courses have also been introduced to make enterprise teaching and learning available to all. Research to underpin and develop teaching is ongoing.

We have made significant progress in a work-intensive year, awareness of Business Start-Up within the student population having grown from 16 per cent in 2002 to 34 per cent in 2003. The major challenges continue to be engagement of staff, attempting to work in a creative and innovative manner within a highly bureaucratic university structure and encouraging both staff and students to change the way they think and work.

We have recently consolidated a vision of Business Start-Up becoming an integral part of student life, embracing creativity and innovation as much as enterprise. We are developing the brand and our activities to encompass artists, designers, architects, nurses, in fact, all students, on the principle that anybody can be creative, innovative and enterprising. Working with the Students' Union will enable us to promote people, like musicians, at the same time as giving others the skills to stage an event for them. Exciting and hopefully transformational times!

The papers in this special issue of Education + Training reflect what Business Start-Up has learned as an organisation as much as what research in particular areas shows. The first paper contextualises Business Start-Up in terms of the enterprise arena per se. The second paper explores the barriers to start-up and includes some research findings from an initial study undertaken at Leeds Metropolitan University. Three "practice"-oriented papers follow. The first is a paper on marketing enterprise. It is followed by two on "teaching" enterprise. The themes here are the utilisation of a summer school and the use of video case studies of entrepreneurial role models. The final paper presents an opportunity to show-case our leading edge research programme in the field of entrepreneurial psychology, and a portrait of contemporary research is complemented by a fusion of original ideas and practical recommendations.

We would like to acknowledge and thank James Slater and Natasha Medeira for their contributions to this special issue of Education + Training.

Martyn Robertson and Amanda Collins