To mark National Enterprise Week, the Andrew Carnegie Business School at Carnegie College held a series of events from Tuesday 25 November – Friday 28 November. The week’s activities gave our students the opportunity to find out more about business in the real world and how they might start their own business too. The skills required to start up in business are also the skills that many large employers such as Shell, Sky, Marks and Spencers, who were all involved in this week too, want from their employees – an entrepreneurial approach and innovative ideas for products and services. The week was about demonstrating that, whether as an employee or self-employed, there are exciting opportunities in business that are there to be grasped.

On Wednesday 26 November, students and staff were put through their entrepreneurial paces by Alison Robson and Melissa Middleton from Project North East, who deliver the Shell LiveWIRE initiative in the UK, started in 1982. The event challenged the students creativity and enterprise skills, and they were given interactive tasks in order to generate ideas, specifically create a business, design a logo and come up with a radio jingle, with book tokens presented to the winning teams.

Alison told the students ‘More Young Entrepreneurs of the Year come from Scotland than any other part of the UK’, with finalists going on to become household names and appearing on tv programmes such as Dragon’s Den and The Last Millionnaire.

Stephen Ritchie, 15, from Ballingry, said ‘I think I speak on behalf of everyone here when I say that it helped everyone who took part to communicate with each other better, and not to be shy about sharing our ideas. Shell LiveWire helped us prepare for the future and think about creating our own business.’ Michelle Delaney, 24, and also from Ballingry commented ‘The challenge was very interesting and I now understand a lot more about business, and thinking more creatively.’ Anees Iqbal, 19, from Dunfermline said ‘It was really useful, and the younger students, who might not have had much experience of working in a team and making presentations in front of others, found it very worthwhile and their confidence has increased.’