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The domino effect of innovation

14 May | Public Sector Innovation

Things have moved quickly since we won the Civil Service Innovation award in 2010 for our National Housing Trust (NHT) initiative – a new funding model for affordable housing. The project is now in the thick of delivery. Contracts have … Continue reading

Getting real bang for the public buck

10 May | BIS Blogs

  On the morning of 23 March, I presented Round 3 of the Regional Growth Fund  – RGF for short – at Gateshead. My visit had been arranged by Alex Wilson and his redoubtable team at BIS, and I was … Continue reading

Mentoring – learning to listen

9 May | BIS Blogs

I joined the SME Mentor programme in November 2011.  Having worked as a Relationship Manager and Business Development Manager for over 10 years, I felt I had a useful armoury of skills with which to help small business owners.  As … Continue reading

Britain’s got enterprise

4 May | BIS Blogs

  There are many great enterprises across Britain that have been a real success over the last couple of years. A selection of them are already showing what they’ve achieved as part of the Business in You campaign. The campaign … Continue reading

How mentoring can help your business

12 April | BIS Blogs

Mentoring can be a valuable asset for businesses of any age, but we know that around 70 per cent of mentored small businesses survive five years or more, which is double the number for non-mentored firms. This isn’t surprising – … Continue reading

“Grinlovate” – an innovation workshop

26 March | Public Sector Innovation

Innovation is at the core of what makes Gripple the success that it is. Before the 2011 Global Manufacturing Festival I suggested to Creative Sheffield that Innovation was not high enough up the agenda and they asked me to do … Continue reading

Forget the stiff upper lip – ask for a mentor

16 March | BIS Blogs

When I started my business aged 33, I had had to learn how to be a Business Owner. I call myself ‘an accidental entrepreneur’. Driven by a desire to create a change in the way business people communicate and support … Continue reading

Keeping the UK’s competition regime on the world stage

15 March | BIS Blogs

  I’ve been in my new job for almost 6 weeks now and am quickly getting to grips with my varied portfolio. From employment matters to postal affairs as well as consumer and competition issues. Lots of different complex areas … Continue reading

Mentoring is a two-way street

13 March | BIS Blogs

  In our book ‘The Beermat Entrepreneur’ we said the first thing anyone should do once they have a business idea is to find a mentor. I have mentored, face-to-face, more than a thousand people and am convinced that finding … Continue reading

Mentoring the key to business success

12 March | BIS Blogs

I fundamentally believe that it is difficult to achieve your dreams or be successful in business without being helped. At every stage of development of my business, I have been fortunate to have had people go out of their way … Continue reading

The great science and engineering adventure

9 March | BIS Blogs

We have a fantastic science and engineering heritage in this country. This is embodied, for example, in Newcastle, where the city now plays host to high-tech science and research with a biotechnology flavour in the Centre for Life.  So, it’s … Continue reading

PAS2011 Twitter Wordle Cloud

9 May | Science and Public Attitudes

There have been a number of twitter discussions going on over the last week since the survey’s publication. There are more detailed posts to follow but I thought I’d link to the wordle.net cloud I produced in the meantime.