Birmingham Business School 2008 Advisory Board Meeting

The annual Advisory Board took place in mid November, with Lord Digby Jones making a welcome return to the Chair.

Lord Digby Jones, Sir Dominic Cadbury and Professor David Bailey

Rebecca Harding gave the Annual Advisory Board Address at the Business School on the afternoon prior to the main meeting. The address asked whether setting up and growing a business is possible in the current economic climate, which Rebecca approached from the perspective of her company’s survey of founders and entrepreneurs in the UK and her own experience as an entrepreneur. Sharing the results of discussions with members of the World Entrepreneur Society, Rebecca looked at some of the challenges faced by policy makers when trying to stimulate an entrepreneurially based economy against the background of economic and financial turmoil. The talk was extremely well received and provided some interesting revelations that questioned assumptions about serial entrepreneurs, ethnicity and gender in entrepreneurship and explored initial evidence, stemming from her survey, on what really motivates entrepreneurs and how they succeed. Advisory Board members, students, alumni, academic faculty and regional business figures, including representatives from Advantage West Midlands, Science City and the Chamber of Commerce were in attendance making for a very interesting networking opportunity at the drinks reception which followed. Rebecca also had chance to meet with members of faculty who teach on the Business School’s Small Business and Enterprise modules, which has spawned additional collaboration with Rebecca in this area and generated ideas to develop these programmes.