We were delighted to welcome budding entrepreneurs from Northumbria University (EBM) to the Estate recently. 42 students from Newcastle Business School’s Entrepreneurial Management programme travelled to Bowcliffe HQ as guests of the Bayford Group.
The students arrived at Bowcliffe at around 9.30am, where they were welcomed by Chief Executive of Bayford and Northumbria University alumnus, Jonathan Turner, Bayford Managing Director Liz Slater, Mark Kilvington who is director of BeFuelcards and Adam Walsh who is director of The Right Fuelcard Company.
Jonathan, Liz, Mark and Adam kicked off by telling the group more about the Bayford Group and about the companies under it, as well as outlining what kind of challenges they might be facing in the future. This led them to the main topic of the day; the challenge for the teampreneurs (students).
Set by the Bayford representatives, the visiting students were challenged to create a presentation that centred around the future of the vehicle re-fuelling industry in the short, medium and long term. Students were asked to make recommendations on where the future of Bayford could be, in relation to those times frames.
For the rest of the afternoon, the five student teams spread themselves around the glorious Bowcliffe Hall premises to work on their presentations and ideas; enjoying the Drivers’ Club, Potting Shed and striking Blackburn Wing.
At 1:30pm everyone reconvened to hear the solutions.
Jonathan Turner said: “The students are a real credit to the Newcastle Business School and we were really impressed with all of them. We all enjoyed the day and have some very useful output from the sessions that we will be working on. This project will come to fruition in some way over the next few years and we look forward to sharing that with Northumbria University.”
Students on the innovative EBM programme have the opportunity to participate in two ‘Generator Sessions’ a year in teams as an entire programme group. It is a chance to show off what they are good at, what they have learnt and how to apply it to a real business situation. It is a combination of brainstorming, problem solving and presentation.
The winning team, NE Unity, was awarded a £200 donation to a charity of their choice and a chance to shadow Adam Walsh and his team in Leeds for a day.
EBM student Liam Watson said: “The best thing about the day was the opportunity to solve a real life business problem, and to work in a professional business environment. The people were inspirational and represented exactly what I think entrepreneurs should be like. It’s eye opening what you can achieve if you put your mind to it.”
Other participants on the day noted how constructive the feedback that they received for their proposals had been. Fellow EBM student Tom Loveday added: “They really appreciated how hard we worked and the effort we’d put in, they really seemed to value our ideas.”
We loved having the students for the day and hearing all their presentations.