Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Entrepreneurship Festival
What is it?
As part of the activities of our LBS Centre for Entrepreneurship and Knowledge Exchange, the Entrepreneurship Festival aims at galvanising students towards building an entrepreneurial mindset. The festival will bring together and is aimed at the business school’s first year students in a mega one-week intensive but exciting programme that is both pedagogical in its design and practical in its outcome.
The festival ‘line-up’ will include engaging lectures and talks that prepare students with practical approaches to coming up with a business idea, working out its desirability and making a presentation to convince an audience of its viability. The highlight of the festival is a competition in which nominated student groups compete before an audience to win prizes. Judges for the competition will be high level individuals whose visibility is crucial to the student experience.
Outcomes
- High student engagement in Year One with subsequent impact on retention
- Quantifiable business ideas that move on to become real businesses
- Networking opportunities for students as they interact with a large cohort
- Assessable presentations that feed into the variously connected student modules
As part of your 1st year at Leeds Business School this festival is a one-week intensive and exciting learning programme that introduces students to the entrepreneurial mindset. Not everyone will be an entrepreneur, but everyone can develop an entrepreneurial mindset, a highly sought-after skill by employers today! The festival will introduce students to some concepts in entrepreneurship and challenge them to think creatively and strategically as they develop a business idea or showcase a solution to solve a problem. Students will work in teams during the festival and will push themselves to do the impossible in only a few days. There are some fantastic prizes and rewards. Get ready!
By the end of the week, it is our expectation that our young entrepreneurs…
- Will be ready to present what idea they have come up with and to persuade an audience as to how this will work, make money, or change the world
- Will also be developing leadership skills as they work under pressure during the festival and work with others
- Will demonstrate presentation skills and receive feedback from the audience
- Will learn to think on their feet as they are challenged by the coaches who are there to facilitate the process
Our expectation of the content of the presentations from our young entrepreneurs at the festival:
7 slides for 7 minutes!
- Slide 1 Introduction - Introduce your idea! Be brief and punchy here. Show some photos or logo if possible!
- Slide 2 The problem - What problem is your idea solving? Make sure it is a strong problem; in other words, justify it with some real data!
- Slide 3 Your solution - Be sure to tell us what your value proposition is! Convince us that it will work and support it with some evidence.
- Slide 4 How it works - This is a demonstration of feasibility. Take us through the customer journey. Use visual aids if possible. This is the time to tell us some aspects of your Business Model Canvas.
- Slide 5 Desirability - Tell us how you know that people want your idea! Tip: be creative here! maybe you could do a social media campaign or some other approach to convince yourself and everyone that people want this idea! ;) Perhaps you interviewed your potential customer segment?
- Slide 6 Viability - Tell us how you will make money! How is your market size analysis looking like? Is your financial forecast attractive? Is it through sales, subscriptions, transaction fees, etc.? Be clear about your business model. How are you different from the competition?
- Slide 7 Conclusion - Finish nicely with a hook and tell us about your team. Show photos of everyone in the team and tell us what skill each of you brings to the table. Any references?
To follow we will update you with dates, 2nd semester in AY24-25.
The benefits of the festival, apart from the high level of buzz and excitement it creates for students on campus, include opportunities to embed entrepreneurial mindset into our students right from the start of their degrees, introduce or streamline entrepreneurship content in the first year, reduce the first-year student attrition rate, reduce assessment burden on the connected modules, work closely with an external sponsor, and obtain external publicity inter alia.
The festival’s student guide will be provided for all students for operational detail. LBS colleagues who are involved in the connected modules will act as entrepreneurship coaches throughout the festival week; a close collaboration with the module leads ensures a successful festival week. The sponsoring organisation for the festival may provide coaches to support the LBS team but external coaches will not be involved in the final assessment of students on the last day of the festival as a quality and safeguarding measure.
The specific week of the festival will be communicated to all first year students. For Business and Management programme, it will be in January and for Accounting and Finance programme, it will be in May. Watch this space!
- Prize 1: £1000
- Prize 2: £500
- Prize 3: £300
Other sponsorship may include various paraphernalia and branded products for the competition day, among others. Certificates of participation will also be given the winning teams.
The sponsor can:
- Brand the competition (e.g. The Joe Bloggs Company Awards).
- Display promotional material in the competition room. It will also be displayed on our teaching portal.
- MyBeckett.
- Be part of the judging panel.
- Award the prizes.
Benefits of sponsorship:
- Direct access to more than 1000 students taking LBS courses. Our students graduate into top jobs and some will go on to create their own businesses while still at University.
- Opportunity to bring entrepreneurship to life for groups of students, some of whom are underrepresented in entrepreneurship – in particular women and ethnic minorities.
