Entrepreneur in the Hot Seat: An evening with Peter Cruddas

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Steven Lake

Peter Cruddas, Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 and CEO of CMC Markets, will be on campus again to share his experiences of building an international financial trading company from an initial personal investment of just £10,000 into a one billion pound company without any outside shareholders or debt. Peter left school at 15 without any formal education and from a deprived background with challenging family circumstances. His is a true rags to riches story.

This year’s event will take the format of a question and answer session – the entrepreneur in the hot seat. As well as inviting you to register for the event, we are also asking you to submit interesting and challenging questions for Peter. A selection of the best questions will be chosen for Peter to answer at the event.

The event will take place in the School of Business & Economics at 5pm on 1^st Dec 2010. Everyone attending the event is invited to a buffet reception afterwards.

Please contact Amy Bowmar (a.bowmer@lboro.ac.uk) by Friday 26th November to register and for a form if you wish to send in a question (you can still register if you don’t wish to ask a question). One question is permitted per form.

Calling all budding entrepreneurs!

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Steven Lake

Can you answer YES to the following questions? If so you may be eligible for support from the new Enterprise Inc project!

Are you a current Loughborough University student or recent graduate?
Have you ever thought about starting your own business?
Have you got an idea for a business?
Are you looking for some cash to get your idea off the ground?

Yes? Then why not enter your business idea and be in with the chance to receive a cash bursary of £2,490! Not only will you receive your cash payment but also be eligible for tailored business support and training to help develop your idea and personal business skills.

If you have a potentially viable business idea and the entrepreneurial drive to convert that idea into a real business venture, then this project is for you.

Check out the Enterprise Inc. website for more details of how to enter, or email Amy Bowmar (A.Bowmar@lboro.ac.uk) at the Lufbra Student Enterprise for more information.

New Events from the Lufbra Student Enterprise

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Steven Lake

Have you got a product or an idea you want to market? Want to meet potential customers? Interested in marketing and buying & selling behaviours? Then Lufbra Student Enterprise has got just the Workshop for you!

Commercialising Your Idea is being held on Wednesday 27^th October between 1-4PM in the Council Chambers at the Students Union, and is hosted by Andrew Corcoran, Company Director of Blueberry Training. It’s the second in the series of events which is being run tthroughout 2010/11.

To register and find out more information, please follow this link. As space is limited it’s advised to book quickly.

You may also be interested in participating in the Prince’s Trust Million Makers competition, which offers students a chance to raise money for charity, improve your CV, compete against other universities all over the country, and improve your business and entrepreneurial skills!

The closing date for entry into this is Friday 29th October, so act now! You can find further details here.

Lastly the Higher Education Funding Council is running ‘Dare To Be Different: Social Entrepreneurship Awards’. These awards exist to help students develop their expertise, skills, knowledge base and business support structures in social entrepreneurship and social enterprise activity.

Fo further information visit the HEFC website.

Database in Focus: FAME

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Steven Lake

The Library will be hosting its first Database in Focus for the Semester on Thursday 28th October in Training Room 1 from 10AM to 11.30AM. The database under the microscope on this occasion will be FAME (Financial Analysis Made Easy).

FAME provides financial details for over 3.4 million companies in the UK and Republic of Ireland. FAME includes company accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management data for the largest 2.4 million UK and Irish companies with summary information for a further 950,000 smaller businesses.

This session will outline how to:

- Access the database.

- Search the database effectively.

- Save bibliographic references.

- Keep up-to-date.

You are also given the opportunity to search the database yourself.

To book yourself on this course:

Staff – either book through Staff Development’s booking system or turn up on the day.

Students – No need to book, just turn up on the day.

Hole-in-the-wall

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Louise Fletcher

When we think of the long list of Scottish inventors, names such as John Logie Baird and Alexander Graham Bell spring to mind. Few of us would come up with John Shepherd-Barron, but he was responsible for a piece of technology which is used 5500 times a minute in the UK.

Shepherd-Barron invented the hole-in-the-wall cash machine, which revolutionised the way we handle our money. He came up with the idea while lying in his bath because he had just missed getting to his bank in town to withdraw money. The businessman, who worked for the printing company De La Rue Instruments at the time, said he was inspired by chocolate vending machines and put the idea to the hard of Barclays Bank “over a pink gin”

Mr Shepherd-Barron, who died on Saturday aged 84, did not patent his system and made no money from his invention, but was made an OBE in 2005 for his services to banking.

To find out more about ‘business ideas’ and ‘patents’ go to MetaLib

An unlikely Business Man

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Louise Fletcher

Unlikely business man

When thinking of prominent business men, names like Donald Trump, Bill Gates and Richard Branson spring to mind, you wouldn’t automatically think of the rapper 50 Cent. He is more synonymous with the multi platinum selling albums ‘Get rich or die trying’ & ‘The Massacre’ which sold more than twenty-one million copies combined.

But this unlikely name has turned away from music to unveil his new collaboration with US author Robert Greene and launched a new business and life self-help book. Called The 50^th Law, which is has links to both the rapper’s name and Greene’s previous book The 48 laws of power (http://tinyurl.com/ykdsw42), the text sees the hip-hop star draw on his experiences of the world of gangs and drugs in New York to highlight certain rules he has learnt about both power and confidence. Due to it’s subject matter, the book fundamentally focuses on how the Jamaican-born star has been able to draw parallels between the way that both criminals and businesses function, thanks to his exposure of both worlds.

He told the BBC’s Today programme : “The boss of the neighbourhood doesn’t rule killing someone out as an option to expand business. In corporate America I’ve interacted with people who absolutely have intentions of killing the competition in a different way” http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8327000/8327278.stm

For more information on business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics, why not take a look at Business Source Complete available via MetaLib .

Defra – making the most of packaging

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Barbara Whetnall

Snowfall Before 2009 - Photo by Steve Keys

Snowfall before 2009 - photo Steve Keys [flickr]

Defra has published a new strategy for managing waste packaging: New Packaging Strategy, Making the most of packaging,

Defra writes that the new publication ’ outlines packaging policy’s direction for the next decade. The Strategy’s overall aim is to minimise the environmental impact of packaging, without compromising its ability to protect the product and also sets out plans to improve the recycling of packaging waste.’

‘In 2008 the UK disposed of an estimated 10.7 million tonnes of packaging waste, of which around 65 % (Source NPWD) was recovered. This is a significant achievement when compared to the fact that only 27% of packaging waste was recovered in 1998 (Source publication: e-Digest of Environmental Statistics, March 2006). However, more still needs to be done and Defra will continue working to:

minimise the amount of packaging used and so the amount of packaging waste, and
ensure that a high proportion of packaging materials are recovered and recycled

The management of packaging and packaging waste is enforced by EC directive 2004/12/EC which seeks to reduce the impact of packaging and packaging waste on the environment by introducing recovery and recycling targets for packaging waste and by encouraging minimisation and reuse.‘

Loughborough University subscribes to several online journals which cover packaging and the environemt, such as Packaging Magazine, Paperboard Packaging, Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management and Waste News etc, which can be accessed via MetaLib. [Athens username and password required for off campus access.].

The University Library also has a comprehensive collection of books on packaging design, graphic design and aesthetics of packaging, innovation, sustainability, structure and environmental issues.

If you would like to learn more about UK packaging and waste mangement, please see the links below.

Packaging & Packaging Waste – recycling and recovery targets

EU directive 2004/12/EC

WRAP

The Advisory Committee on Packaging (ACP)

Department of Design and Technology, Loughborough University

Euro 2008

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Helen Young

Now that Euro 2008 has started, without any of the UK’s teams, there are loads of websites out there with information about the tournament. The key one is naturally UEFA’s official Euro 2008 website, which has live video, replays, and all the latest news for fans. The BBC has its own site, which also includes a blog and commentary from its presenters and journalists, as does ITV. However, if you don’t like football or want to look beyond the match results and inevitable hype, there is a lot more to the event than what happens on the pitch, as you can see from the research that has been done on Euro 2004.

A search on the database SPORTdiscus for ‘Euro 2004′ finds 143 results with subjects including biography, strategy, statistics, reporters and reporting, management and interviews. There are abstracts of articles about ‘Euro 2004 and football fashion’, ‘The importance of events in tourism:impacts of the UEFA-Euro 2004 on the accommodation industry in Algarve, Portugal’ and ‘An evaluation of the sponsorship of Euro 2004′. A similar search on Communications Abstracts discovered two very different articles. One looking at Greek nationalism and international recognition in Euro 2004 and another examining representations of Portugal and England in Euro 2004 newspaper coverage.

So, if you are not a sports fan, don’t forget that Euro 2008 is about a lot more than football, and if you do enjoy the game, make the most of the next few weeks!

Off-campus access to on-campus resources now possible

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Helen Young

The University has a new service which enables users to access online resources previously only available on campus. The Remote Working Portal is available at https://vpn.lboro.ac.uk and staff and students can login using their Loughborough University username and password. Users can then follow the links to Metalib, in addition to other University sites.

Databases which are now accessible from off-campus, via this route, include Business Insights and Hemscott Company Guru Academic. You will also be able to access some journals, which have until now been limited to on-campus access only. You will find out about these via the Library Catalogue.

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Category Archives: Business