Multiplier Event Report – UK

Event Title: EntreCom4ALL Entrepreneurial Event

Location: Channing Hall, 45 Surrey Street, Sheffield, England, S1 2LG

Agenda:

Facilitator’s Comments:

On Thursday 24^th October 2019, Inova Consultancy hosted a multiplier event in Sheffield as part of the EntreCom4ALL – Open resources for ENTREpreneurship COMpetences FOR ALL project. As the project is coming to an end, we presented the whole lifespan and all intellectual outputs of the project. Furthermore, we highlighted the project’s sustainability and promoted the successful EntreComp Framework and the Online EntreCom4ALL Entrepreneurial Platform.

In addition to this, we ran various workshops to discuss the different intellectual outputs and to disseminate the tools gathered on the platform. This helped attendees to reflect upon and assess their entrepreneurial skills based on the EntreComp Framework. This enabled them to get some ideas together for their potential prospective entrepreneurial ventures. We invited inspirational and highly successful local businesswomen from Sheffield to give talks to our attendees about their entrepreneurial journeys and how they turned an idea into a rewarding business.

In order to recruit participants for this event, we employed a number of methods to be able to reach the target group and relevant stakeholders of the project. We promoted the multiplier event through our various social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as in our experience this method has proven to be very effective. We also promoted the event in our Newsletter and directly spoke to many of our contacts that we know here at Inova in order to reach even more stakeholder that could be interested in the project and our event. Many people on the day told us that they had heard about the event from a friend and were really excited to attend an inspiring event to kick-start their entrepreneurial capabilities. Further to this, staff at Inova also research good networking and business opportunities in the local area and attended these to connect with blossoming entrepreneurs that may find our event and the project’s outputs and results useful for their career. A total of 46 people attended our multiplier event!

To start things off at our event, we invited our participants and guests to register and provided light refreshments. We also allowed time for networking between our guests so that participants could get to know each other.

On Thursday 24^th October 2019, Inova Consultancy hosted a multiplier event in Sheffield as part of the EntreCom4ALL – Open resources for ENTREpreneurship COMpetences FOR ALL project. As the project is coming to an end, we presented the whole lifespan and all intellectual outputs of the project. Furthermore, we highlighted the project’s sustainability and promoted the successful EntreComp Framework and the Online EntreCom4ALL Entrepreneurial Platform.

In addition to this, we ran various workshops to discuss the different intellectual outputs and to disseminate the tools gathered on the platform. This helped attendees to reflect upon and assess their entrepreneurial skills based on the EntreComp Framework. This enabled them to get some ideas together for their potential prospective entrepreneurial ventures. We invited inspirational and highly successful local businesswomen from Sheffield to give talks to our attendees about their entrepreneurial journeys and how they turned an idea into a rewarding business.

In order to recruit participants for this event, we employed a number of methods to be able to reach the target group and relevant stakeholders of the project. We promoted the multiplier event through our various social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as in our experience this method has proven to be very effective. We also promoted the event in our Newsletter and directly spoke to many of our contacts that we know here at Inova in order to reach even more stakeholder that could be interested in the project and our event. Many people on the day told us that they had heard about the event from a friend and were really excited to attend an inspiring event to kick-start their entrepreneurial capabilities. Further to this, staff at Inova also research good networking and business opportunities in the local area and attended these to connect with blossoming entrepreneurs that may find our event and the project’s outputs and results useful for their career. A total of 46 people attended our multiplier event!

To start things off at our event, we invited our participants and guests to register and provided light refreshments. We also allowed time for networking between our guests so that participants could get to know each other.

The EntreComp Framework describes entrepreneurship as a transversal competence, which can be applied by citizens in several spheres of life, from nurturing personal development to actively participating in society. This means that the exposure to this framework and its tools at our multiplier event was highly beneficial for our attendees to implement the tools in their professional, as well as personal, daily life.

After this introductory presentation, we showcased and promoted the EntreCom4ALL Online Platform to our attendees and encouraged them to register and engage with the resources that this platform provides. As the EntreCom4ALL platform is currently unavailable on mobile devices, we appropriately utilised the EntreComp Framework competency criteria and gave this via a handout to attendees. They were then asked to take a moment to reflect and assess their ability regarding each of the topics within the framework. This also helped attendees to realise what it may take to set up and run a successful business. The participants were highly engaged during this activity and were eager to learn more about their entrepreneurial qualities on the EntreCom4ALL platform.

After this self-reflection activity, it was time to welcome our two Key Speakers to the floor to give a talk about their journey through entrepreneurialism and the steps they took to become successful in the world of business.

First up was Hannah Duraid from The Great Escape Game. Hannah runs a successful consortium of escape rooms across Sheffield and South Yorkshire. Hannah decided to let her creativity run wild and capitalise on a business that is all about teamwork, fear and innovation. She led the way in creating scenario-specific and entertaining ‘escape rooms’ which are typically rooms where teams are ‘locked’ in and have to solve many puzzles and challenges in order to ‘escape’ the room. Hannah shared her top tips for overcoming obstacles when starting a business. Many of the attendees remarked that they found Hannah’s talk very inspirational and eye-opening.

Our second speaker also gave a talk on their experience in business with their local catering company. This speaker was Abi Golland, who runs The Street Food Chef which is a very successful regional catering business. She had a very open and honest approach when providing her insight into setting up and managing a busy yet rewarding business.

Hannah and Abi’s detailed slides of progression through the years inspired many of the attendees to approach the speakers at the end of this session to congratulate them and also ask for tips and words of wisdom that they could take home and implement when creating or running their business.

After these captivating speeches, we hosted four entrepreneurial workshops that our participants could take part in. The workshops each reflected the results of the intellectual outputs of the EntreCom4ALL project. Participants were able to move around to take part in different activities.

One workshop was hosted by our colleague Michele who presented participants with business scenarios and prompted them to be creative with their solution to the business opportunity. This was a great way to engage the key competencies of ‘Creativity’ and ‘Spotting Opportunites’ which are part of the EntreComp Framework, as reflected in the entrepreneurial skills self-assessment activity on the EntreCom4ALL platform.