Strathclyde University's 'Brightest Young Business'

I am a student at the University of Strathclyde (in Glasgow) and, as part of their many excellent enterprise activities, was invited to the annual 'Enterprise Awards'. There were a variety of prizes for the social entrepreneurs, spin out companies and enterprising staff of the University. There was also a 'Strathclyde Supernovas: Brightest Young Business Award', which I was delighted to be awarded.

The prize is a one week course at MIT University's Sloan Management Business School (worth over $8,000), to study Strategy. I'll be going over in June to do this and will be sure to post about it afterwards to let you know how I get on.

Enterprise Week

To be honest, I've only really written this post so that I can put up this picture. It looks like I am just a head, haha.

Anyway, if you didn't know, this week was 'Enterprise Week'. This is the one week of the year where thousands of enterprise related events take place simultaneously, with the aim of encouraging young people to think about starting their own businesses or become more enterprising in their lives. As this is something that I am quite big on, I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in with helping at various events around the country.

On Monday, I spoke to about 1,000 schoolkids from around Scotland at the annual Young Enterprise Scotland conference. This was quite a laugh and the kids were visibly enthused by my story - hopefully some of them went away thinking 'well, if he can do it then why can't I?...'

The picture at the top of the page is of me 'launching' the Biggart Baillie Innovation Awards at the Glasgow Science Centre. I gave a talk about the process of coming up with my innovation, which led to me being a winner at last years awards. If you have invented something or started an innovative business, I would urge you to check it out . There are three categories (Student, Open and Female) and a prize of £1,000 for each.

I have also been involved in the Make Your Mark Challenge , which is the biggest live enterprise event in the country and will see teams of schoolkids compete next Thursday to solve a problem that will be set on the day. This is being hosted by Heather Suttie, the Xfm DJ and I will be helping to judge the entries.

To finish off the week, I was invited to speak to students at Bath University about starting a business, juggling studies while running one and what help is out there for young entrepreneurs. That was all rounded off by a drink in the rather impressive setting of the city's famous Roman Baths.

The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards...

Wow, what a week.

I don't mean for this to be another 'I got an award' post but this is a story I really have to write about. On Wednesday, I went over to Chicago to the 'Global Student Entrepreneur Awards', having been chosen to represent the UK (and the University of Strathclyde). I won't write about all the details but basically I had to give a 20 minute presentation to a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs about my business, what I wanted to achieve, my ethics and so on...

Originally, over 700 students around the world were nominated to enter the competition, then 26 were picked to go to Chicago and then they picked 6 based on the presentations. I got to present again and also watched some of the other five guys talking about their businesses and ideas. All of the 26 young entrepreneurs in the competition had incredible businesses, one of my favourites being Ten Minute Media - this guy, Brendan, makes websites for people like Mick Jagger and Natalie Cole. There was also a Swede, Erik, who made software for McDonald's.

I had never met such passionate and driven people my own age - we all shared an enthusiasm for ideas and enterprise and got on very well with oneanother.

Anyway, I ended up winning the competition and also got a special 'Social Impact' prize. It was a really cool few days and

Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award...

Firstly, I've not grown a beard. I'm still as fresh faced as ever. This is a picture of James picking up 'The Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award' for me from Adrienne Lawler off the news. Sadly, I wasn't able to go along to pick it up myself since I was on my way to Chicago.

Anyway, the prize was given to me as part of the Startups Awards . There were all sorts of cool other entrepreneurs there and the Young Entrepreneur category was open to anyone under the age of 30. I was delighted to get a prize, obviously.

Thanks for picking it up Jimmy.