SIE – Where are we now?

Hi Friends, The Scottish Institute for Enterprise is back for the new academic year! This is what has been going on…

The Young Innovators Challenge (YIC 2013) wrapped up

Winners of The YIC 2013: David Townsend, Victoria Hamilton, Michael Yiin Shih Jie, and Blair Bowman. Winner Laura Jayne Nevin was unable to attend.

Five young entrepreneurs were awarded £50,000 each, plus one year of business support for their ideas. From the press release: “Blair Bowman (Aberdeen University), David Townsend (St Andrews University), Laura Jayne Nevin (Edinburgh College of Art), Michael Yiin Shih Jie (Edinburgh University) and Victoria Hamilton (Strathclyde University) impressed the judges with their business plans during a tense process to claim the £50,000 and one year of dedicated business support to turn their ideas into reality.”

Here are some of the highlights from the competition!

And the winners made the papers

So then all of us at Scottish Institute for Enterprise got together… And said hello to some new faces!

I’m on the left, easily identifiable by my jumping at the wrong time!

These are my fellow interns, they are students at different Colleges and Universities across Scotland. There they will be communicating and interacting with their fellow students to promote enterprise and entrepreneurship!

What is coming up?

SIE competitions including Fresh Ideas  and New Ventures

New Ventures has a top prize of £10,000 and is for students with an existing business idea that is ready to go!

Fresh Ideas will award five winners £500 each and is designed to help you learn how to develop an idea!

Regional events and competitions just for you

Well, as an Open University student study is decentralised, a fancy way to say we work remotely and aren’t campus based. We have classes that begin in both October and February, so some students (like me) have had classes throughout the summer and are just about to sit an exam ( …yay). This has the benefit of making education accessible regardless of where you are in Scotland, but it also means we don’t get to say hello face to face so often. With students all over Scotland it would be nice to have some fun activities near home, right?

So with that in mind, this year we’ll have much more regional activities and events that Open University students can take part in!

I’ll be promoting those for you here, on our Facebook group and on twitter at @SIE_OU

And of course we’ll also be running competitions with fun prizes you can win!

Keeping in touch is easy

You can visit The Scottish Institute for Enterprise at www.sie.ac.uk any time for all the information you can handle

Join our Facebook group for Open University students  where I’ll be posting regularly with news, stories, ideas and updates

Follow me on twitter at @SIE_OU

And please check back here on Enterprise Everywhere where I’ll be posting events and competitions as well as Enterprise news from home and abroad!