London Met's business incubator, Accelerator, has been selected to deliver the British Council's 2021 international enterprise competition to find the best early-stage entrepreneurs.
Date: 26 November 2020
London Met’s business incubator, Accelerator, has been chosen to continue to deliver the Creative Spark Big Idea Challenge, for the fourth year running, following a competitive tendering process.
This international pitching competition was first delivered by London Met in 2018 and supported more than 1000 early-stage entrepreneurs yearly, coming from 70 partner HE institutions across Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
The pitching competition is one part of the Creative Spark: Higher Education Enterprise Programme, which has three elements:
- Development of the funded partnerships between universities and creative institutions in the UK and those in programme countries
- Delivering enterprise skills training packages to students and creative entrepreneurs, ranging from pitching ideas and starting a business, to protecting intellectual property and securing financial support
- Delivering an English Learning Programme with a range of new digital language learning content. This will include online learning packs on the English Channel platform, online courses and new Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) focused on English for entrepreneurship.
Simon Boot, Head of Accelerator said: "We’re delighted to work with the British Council to find and nurture the start-up stars of tomorrow. There is a wealth of talent among young entrepreneurs, and Creative Spark gives them the tools to develop their new enterprises and build international networks. We can’t wait to see the new ideas that are brought to the competition in 2021."
The project will build on the partnership of Accelerator and the British Council over the last few years, and play an important role in helping to shape the development of local entrepreneurial ecosystems across the Central Asian and Caucasus regions.
