This week is Global Entrepreneurship Week, with over 6,000 events being held across the country designed to encourage people to set up businesses on their own. The timing may seem strange, given the record numbers of businesses folding and the often labyrinthine processes business owners now need to go through to get even the most rudimentary funding from banks.
But as the UK looks to bounce back from the brink, and more and more commentators tell us that it is the small business owners that will generate that boost, the positive stories of innovative new companies carving their own niche are increasing.
This week’s Sunday Times reports on the growing trend of people starting their own ventures from home, with only a telephone, a good internet connection and a bit of grit and business ingenuity as starting blocks. According to Enterprise Nation over 2.8 million such businesses are operating in the UK, generating £284 billion. Perhaps the ideal of the cottage industry is not yet dead.
Global Entrepreneur Week is endorsed by influential bodies such as the Institute of Directors, British Chambers of Commerce, the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses and is an excellent opportunity to showcase the next generation of businesses looking to make their mark on the UK economy. It is good to see national organisations backing such enterprise and indicates a confidence slowly creeping back to UK business.
Another large entrepreneurial initiative, stemming from right here in Manchester, is Raw 2010. Set for 20th January 2010, Raw has been designed to blow the current stale format of the all day business conference out of the water. Raw will bring together 350 of the North West’s top entrepreneurs along with 15 of the world’s best business speakers, in a day of activity that asks attendees to forget what they know about business, and use the day to help relaunch the North West’s entrepreneurial economy.
After a year of UK businesses having to grit teeth and fight through the setbacks, the first months of 2010 are already looking like a key time for many businesses to make their mark and begin to claw back lost ground.
Bring it on.
Tags: 2010, entrepreneurs, Global Entrepreneurship Week, RAW, UK recovery