NESTA POLICY BREAKFAST: Developing Entrepreneurial Graduates with Professor Allan Gibb – Monday 8th September, 2008

Workforce skills are at the heart of future economic competitiveness.  However, if the UK is to become an ‘innovation nation’, it is not enough for universities to develop employable graduates with the technical skills that organisations need.  In addition, graduates must be enterprising people – having a set of personal skills, attributes, behaviours and motivational capacities that add up to an entrepreneurial mindset.

Over the past year, NESTA, the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (NCGE) and the Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) have worked collaboratively to investigate how universities can play their part in developing entrepreneurial graduates.  By conducting detailed background research and convening a panel of international experts, this project has collected best practice from around the world and developed it into a practical guide for universities to create environments conducive to developing entrepreneurial graduates.

On September 8th, Professor Allan Gibb, will lead our policy breakfast and present the findings of the project.

To find out more and to take part in the conversation, please join us for what we are sure will be a stimulating and thought-provoking debate.  Full breakfast will be provided.

When: Monday 8th September, 8.00am – 9.30am

Where: NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE

NESTA’s monthly Policy Breakfasts aim to strengthen the innovation policy community and foster debate and new ideas.

Professor Allan Gibb BA PhD OBE, Professor Emeritus, Durham University

Allan Gibb, former chair and Director of the Small Business Centre at Durham Business School UK, has been engaged in the field of Entrepreneurship and Small Enterprise development for over 30 years.

He has experience in over 80 countries around the world, has been adviser to many governments, governmental organisations and non-government entities and has worked with all of the major international development organisations. He has broad expertise ranging from the field of education at all levels, to small and medium business creation, development and internationalisation, to large company restructuring and intrapreneurial development.

Allan has published widely on issues covering enterprise/entrepreneurial education, SME policy development, entrepreneurial restructuring of organisations and management development.

NESTA’s Policy & Research Unit

The NPRU aims to help transform the UK’s capacity for innovation by:

* Building a relevant and coherent policy and research programme that resonates with national priorities, political realities, media interest and the research frontier

 * Integrating policy goals within all NESTA programmes - using research to design programmes, and using the evidence base created by programmes to drive policy development

 * Establishing a strong policy and research community around innovation