Keeping you informed - Reports from past Business School events
Female Entrepreneurship: Gearing Up For Business Growth (May)
The event entitled ‘Female Entrepreneurship: Gearing Up For Business Growth’ was held on the 15th May 2014 in Birmingham. Professor Kiran Trehan Co–Director of the Enterprise and Diversity Alliance (EDA) at Birmingham Business School, Birmingham University, the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) combined forces to host the event for small, women-led businesses to facilitate business growth and develop innovative models for business support.
The event opened with a presentation by Professor Trehan which set out the key issues faced by female entrepreneurs based on the research. This was followed by a response from RBS and NatWest which focused on how they are responding to the barriers women are facing. Key highlights of the workshop included a presentation from a female entrepreneur around the challenges she faces as a leader of a small business and the role of mentoring in helping her grow her business; and a group interactive session between female entrepreneurs and finance and business specialists exploring how working collectively they could address key business issues women face in growing their businesses.
Some of the key concepts and issues that female entrepreneurs face in growing and developing their businesses that stemmed from the discussions on the day included:
- Confidence issues
- Gaps in financial knowledge
- Access to business support and mentoring
In relation to confidence issues that female entrepreneurs face, the banks highlighted that they are helping to support female entrepreneurs by:
- Sponsoring awards such as the ‘NatWest Every-Woman Awards’ to promote female role models
- Providing top tips on their websites on how to make applications successful
In response to gaps in the financial knowledge that female entrepreneurs face, the banks are also working to support female entrepreneurs by:
- Supporting female entrepreneurs in developing financial plans
- Encouraging female entrepreneurs to borrow money as it is a tool for business growth
- Highlighting that there are various support providers such as accountants that women can utilise for support
Finally, the banks explained that they have developed initiatives to help improve issues women face in accessing business support and mentoring including:
- Establishing ‘Women in Business Specialists’ to provide specialist support to women
- Peer-to-peer mentoring opportunities in collaboration with the EDA
This event marks the beginning of an important programme of collaborative work between RBS, NatWest and the EDA that aims to provide fresh insights, create innovations in support for female entrepreneurs and develop leading-edge research which promotes growth.
See and hear more about the event by viewing the ‘Gearing Up for Business Growth’ networking event video here.
For a copy of the event report, please contact Liz Frost at: E.C.Frost@bham.ac.uk
REPORT FROM SASE CONFERENCE, JULY, CHICAGO (JULY)
Birmingham Business School had a significant presence at the 26th Annual Meeting of Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) held at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago this July.
Academics from the Business School presented nine papers at the conference and were responsible for the organisation of two mini-conferences.
Lisa De Propris, Christina Niforou and Paulina Ramirez of the Global Value Chains research cluster were co-organisers of the mini-conference on ‘Multi-Level Institutions and the Changing Global-Local Dynamics of Production in a Context of Crisis’, which saw papers presented by the organisers and other members of the cluster including Pamela Robinson and Linda Hseih.
Andy Hodder co-organised a separate mini-conference on ‘Young People, Precarious Work, and Trade Unionism’, as well as presenting two papers. Michel Goyer and Paul Lewis also presented papers and were discussants at the conference.
Both mini-conferences were a success and the conference was an enjoyable and intellectually stimulating experience. It is hoped that Birmingham’s involvement with SASE with continue to grow in future years, starting with the 2015 conference to be held at the London School of Economics.
CREME and IAS event ‘Inclusive Entrepreneurship: Innovations in Research and Practice’ held in Brussels (July)
The workshop entitled ‘Inclusive Entrepreneurship: Innovations in Research and Practice’ was held on the 9th and 10th of July 2014, and attracted re-searchers, practitioners, policy makers, members of the corporate and banking sectors and entrepreneurs, from 12 countries. The workshop was generously funded and organised by the Institute of Advanced Studies (University of Birmingham); and supported by the University of Birmingham Brussels Office, the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME) (based at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham) and the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC).
“EDA work shows that engagement needs to be embedded from the beginning of the research design and to go beyond the dissemination of results.” Prof Kiran Trehan, University of Birmingham
The event outlined key developments in the area of immigrant and ethnic minority business research; as well as presenting and promoting the UK based knowledge exchange vehicle, the Enter-prise and Diversity Alliance (EDA) as a tool for making diversity everyone’s business. The two-day workshop brought participants up to date with current research in the area of diversity and entrepreneurship, providing the space and opportunity to discuss emerging challenges for research
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19th International Colloquium on Entrepreneurial and Small Business Marketing, Sustainability, Entrepreneurial Marketing and Marketing Practice in SMEs' (September 2014)
Contemporary marketplaces have radically changed, creating paradigm shifts in research which closely engage with entrepreneurship, innovation and marketing as forceful drivers of change. This colloquium encouraged debate between researchers and practitioners who engage with the new challenges for entrepreneurs and the growing firm in a global climate with increasing market, business and financial constraints.
The event was held on the 4th of September 2014, at Birmingham Business School and was extremely well received, especially Mr Magic Whiteboard! Papers are being further developed as a working paper series; Dr Zubin Sethna & Dr Rosalind Jones will keep you informed.