By Steve Metcalfe, YBI Communications Director
As Global Entrepreneurship Week becomes ever more part of the enterprise calendar in the UK, regional initiatives have emerged, each with their particular focus and themes.
Just one of these initiatives is York Business Week and yesterday I was in York to learn more about the campaign, which aims to promote York as a hub for enterprise.
Nick Eggleton of Acute Marketing has played a key role in the development of York Business Week and he told me that two key drivers were the relative lack of start-ups in York (measured by VAT registration) and the high proportion (around a third) of public sector workers in the city. As the public sector inevitably shrinks, its natural that small business needs to be there to provide employment. You can read more about York Business Week in a separate blog post.
I participated in Growing for Gold, a series of workshops and inspiring presentations put on by Rambutan. It took place in the modern Ron Cooke Hub in the University of York, a brand new centre which even when the sun is not shining as much as it was on Thursday must be an inspiring and energising building, with an huge open plan atrium, large glass walls and curved staircases.
Ben Hunt-Davies won the gold medal in the coxed eights in the 2000 Olympics and I had previously heard great things about his “Will it make the boat go faster?” presentation. The point of his talk was to inspire people to question everything they do and not just do things for the sake of it.
Over a two year period Ben and his fellow athletes challenged every part of their training. Instead of just doing more training than the year before, in an effort to improve their rankings, they ended up doing less training – but doing it smarter. Unless they knew the reason why they were doing a specific task, and whether it would make the boat go faster, they wouldn’t do it. They even passed on the opportunity to attend the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics, because – you’ve guessed it – it wouldn’t make the boat go faster.
The clarity and focus that this brought to Ben’s successful Olympic campaign is surely one that should be applied to all entrepreneurs who need to focus on constantly doing things better, and not doing things that won’t improve the business.
The rest of the day was spent in small workshops discussing issues such as more effective time management, being able to listen better, and leadership skills. All good things that aspiring entrepreneurs need to know in order to operate better! Each workshop was too short but brought a fresh, surprising new angle to perennial issues that small businesses faces – and helped in no small part by the inspiring surrounds of the Ron Cooke Hub.
More about York Business Week at http://www.yorkbusinessweek.co.uk/
