Earlier this week I was invited to give a pre-dinner speech to 60 young graduates wanting to start social companies in the creative industries. The event was part of the RSA and NCGE Flying Start Programme offering undergraduates and graduates across the academic disciplines the opportunity and support to start their own businesses.
It’s really important that programmes like this exist to create awareness amongst undergraduates and graduates that staring a company is an option when leaving university. Over the next year I will be mentoring 3 of the graduates to support them in moving their ideas and companies forward, so watch this space!
Jul 20th, Alice Osborne said:
This sounds really interesting, I can’t imagine feeling able to start up a company as soon as you graduate.
Do you think the students on the course are there becaause they have amazing ideas which need to exist or because they are more business minded and are entrepreneur’s?
Jul 24th, Deborah Szebeko said:
I think it’s a bit of both, the biggest challenge for design graduates is how you turn a great idea into a business. This starts to involve a new range of skills which are often not taught on design courses. I think if we saw more business studies taught alongside design courses, we would then seen more designer becoming entrepreneurs.
Jul 26th, Paul Thurston said:
I totally agree, there were loads of people with great ideas on my course but when you look at what people are up to now there are only a few who have taken these forward.
Organisations like the RSA and NESTA seem to be filling in many of the gaps design courses shoud be filling. These are practical skills which can really help grow people’s ideas into a sustainable business, universities seem to be waking up to the fact that they have a responsibility to teach these skills, just very slowly.