University of Bedfordshire undergraduates and graduates had the chance to exploit their entrepreneurial flair as well as differentiate themselves from thousands of other graduates by attending a free Enterprise Summer School at the University.

The course aimed to enhance the students’ enterprise skills and, combined with the University’s already great reputation for student employability, it was worth giving up four days of the summer holidays for!

Delivered in partnership between the University’s Knowledge Hub and Blueberry Training, participants were transformed from talented students into high performance business teams. They explored business ideas, marketing strategies and techniques, communication strategies and product development.

The students will be able to transfer these valuable skills to their workplace, or use them to develop their own business ideas.

The aim of the summer school was for teams to use the knowledge they gained to create a business project for a new product or service of their choice.

Over four days, the teams worked on developing their business projects. On the final day they pitched their projects to business experts, Gaynor Bray of the University’s Knowledge Hub, and Andrew Corcoran from Blueberry Training, as well as their peers in the other groups.

Both product and service ideas were developed by the groups, and all were deemed worthy of investment by Andrew.

There was an electronic tag to prevent the loss of luggage, a rental service for luxury fashion accessories, a friendly letting service for students and an inventive software package for targeted mobile phone advertising.

After considering the projects, the judges gave feedback on all the pitches, along with some valuable advice to the teams.

The winner of the Enterprise Summer School was Shoe I.D., an innovative shoe customisation design service which would bring together original and creative design, first-class customer service and excellent distribution channels.

At the end of the course, fifty per cent more of the students wanted to start their own business compared to those at the beginning.

The students found the course informative and stimulating and comments included ‘A real learning experience – something new every day’ and ‘Now I know the steps I have to take to succeed with a business’.

Gaynor Bray described the pitches from the teams as: “An impressive range of ideas developed into workable business plans in a very short time, and professionally presented.”

And she said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw some of these students pitching for investment on TV before long!”

The photo shows the winning team Shoe I.D. relaxing with the judges after their hard-fought victory. Left to right: Anil Ishaq, Michael Ofoegbu, Andrew Corcoran (standing), Ann Naylor, Gaynor Bray (standing) and Ronald Edema.