News | Disruptive students descend on Birmingham!

On February 18th and 19th student entrepreneurs from all over the UK will descend on Aston Business School in Birmingham for this year’s National Student Enterprise Conference. The two-day conference, which is now in its third year, is designed to prepare and equip enterprising college and university students for entrepreneurial careers.

Over the course of the weekend, delegates will attend keynotes, workshops, and crash courses, all delivered and led by entrepreneurs, investors, and enterprise specialists.  The entire event, which is the annual flagship conference of the National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs (NACUE), is tailored to provide students with everything they need to become entrepreneurs themselves.

This year’s conference is NSEC2012: CTRL ALT DISRUPT, and focuses on disruptive innovation. Students today are surrounded by products and services that have turned markets upside down - Google Search, iTunes, Netflix, Facebook, the list is endless.  NACUE aims to inspire and prepare conference delegates to become disruptive innovators, whether that means starting businesses, joining start-ups, or even taking their entrepreneurial skills into the corporate world.

Speakers include Tony Blair’s former personal branding coach, Malcolm Levene, Start-Up Britain Co-Founder Rajeeb Dey, and John Foong, Head of Google’s Cloud Computing Sales for EMEA. The conference programme both introduces the theories and concepts behind disruptive innovation, and provides practical tools for budding innovators. Delegates will learn how to write business plans, how to secure investment, how to generate sales, and everything in between.

With youth unemployment at an all-time high, student entrepreneurship in the UK is on the rise, and this is a trend that NACUE wants to see continue. The organisation’s mission is to create the most enterprising generation of young people ever, through building and fostering student-led enterprise initiatives in the UK and around the world. Every year NACUE hosts the National Student Enterprise Conference to celebrate and propel the student entrepreneurship movement further.

NACUE’s CEO, Hushpreet Dhaliwal, said, “At a time when countries around the world are vying for the innovative edge, and racing to build economies that respond to the digital and interconnected age, I believe it’s never been more important to get students thinking about unlocking new forms of innovation.”

The conference is to be hosted by Aston Business School, part of Aston University.  Helen Higson, Aston Business School Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor, said, “Aston Business School is delighted to be supporting the 2012 National Student Enterprise Conference.  We pride ourselves on our long history of supporting entrepreneurs and hosting NSEC is a fantastic way for us to do this.”

To follow the conference proceedings on Twitter, use the special hashtag #NSEC2012