The Intern has finished!  Congratulations to Amy who has won a paid 8 week internship with Royal Mail.  Also congratulations to Matt (pictured) who has won 10 days shadowing former TV Dragon  and founder of Red Letter Days Rachel Elnaugh.

Thank you to everyone who took part, and to everyone who has helped make this competition happen.  A special thank you must go to Helen Gammons who has been amasing as our very own Alan Sugar, and without whom The Intern would never have happened.

For videos of The Intern visit our YouTube Channel.

The SimVenture Tournament Spring 2009 is now officially over.

Here is the final TOP 10 list with the profits  made in brackets:

1. SimNoor Systems (1,223,150)

2. C3 Nomnomnom (688,570)

3. A&C (627,104)

4. Dream Team (478,520)
5. Vaidas Mykolaitis (473,334)
6. JJ’s (456,571)
7. Money Makers (308,897)
8. Grimes trading (256,608)
9. Anka&Kornnel (205,067)
10. Joy’s team (203,827)

Congratulations to SimNoor Systems team that won a £50 prize and C3  Nomnomnom and A&C that will be awarded with the Enterprise Zone gifts.  Prizes and Certificates of Participation will be available for
collection from the Enterprise Zone on Wednesday, April 1st.

Thank you all for taking part in the tournament. We hope it was a valuable and enjoyable experience and we hope to see you in the future Enterprise Zone events!

The IBM Semi-Finalists: L-R Chun Fung Kwok, Maryam Raji,Mathew Wescott (RBS representative), Helen Gammons (WRCETLE representative), Steve Redmond and Lukas Schmidt

In February this year a team of four students from the University of Sheffield reached the semi-finals of the IBM University Business Challenge where they were narrowly beaten to a place in the final by a team from Exeter University.

The IBM University Business Challenge offers undergraduates a unique opportunity to improve their knowledge of the business world.  As a team they take the role of management consultants for a series of realistic, simulated companies, making all the critical decisions that affect the company’s performance.  The challenge helps students to improve their decision-making skills, develop their team-working abilities and increase their knowledge in key business areas such as marketing, finance and production.

Click here to read a report from this years’ semi finalists.

If you would like more information on the IBM University Business Challenge please click here.

If you will be an undergraduate student in any discipline at the University of Sheffield in 2009/10 and would like to be kept informed of next years Challenge, or other enterprise opportunities at the University please e-mail enterprisezone@sheffield.ac.uk.

Alison Wright prsenting winner Dave Caston with the jar of sweets.

Last week White Rose CETL Enterprise Sheffield ran a “guess the number of pink sweets in the jar” competition raising money for Comic Relief.

Thank you to all 20 people who made a guess and raised £25.  The Red Nose Day total stood at £57,809,938 following the live telethon making it the most successful Red Nose Day ever.

The competition was won by Dave Chaston from epiGenesys.  His guess of 89 sweets was just three of the actual total of 87.

If you would like to make a donation to Comic Relief click here.

The Ultimate Trader Challenge is now in its first week with the league table dominated by non-economics. Congratulations to Trader XIEFEI for a resounding 26.5% portfolio increase. REEHMFC & Grand Champ are leading the way for the economics this week. Trading conditions were fierce last week, with only 18 traders making a profit.

SimVenture Tournament Spring 2009 starts on the 4th of March.

With over 40 students registered it is going to be the biggest SimVenture tournament so far!

To fnd out more about our ultimate business challange click here

This week’s Skill Build sessions have be recorded and are available on YouTube.  To watch them please visit WRCETLE’s YouTube Channel.

Hello guys!

Thank you for signing up for the Enterprise Zone events and workshops. We hope that through us, you would develop some invaluable skills and awareness that enable you to stand out as a University Graduate. We have a number of events this semester and we are in the process of starting a brand new innovative society – Sheffield Entrepreneurs. There are positions to be filled so we will be sending more information in the near future.
Incase you did not take your own copy of the ‘Event Leaflets’, please visit our website –www.sheffieldcetle.ac.uk for the events and information about us.

You can download the presentation from last night’s Skill Build session by clicking on this link.

This years Spring Semester Skill Build sessions began with an inspirational talk from Dave Wickett on being an entrepreneur, and specifically his life as an entrepreneur.

Dave Wicket is a former economics, econometrics and maths lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, then Sheffield Polytechnic. Dave’s life as an entrepreneur started in 1981 with the purchase of the Fat Cat Pub in the Kelham Island area of Sheffield. The Fat Cat was for a time the only pub in the City of Sheffield not owned by a major brewery. By the inclusion of a wide range of beers new to the area, and exclusion of music and electronic games to create an ambiance for conversation, the Fat Cat differentiated itself from the competition and became a huge success.

Despite the success Dave remained a lecturer until 1990 until the opening of the Kelham Island Brewery home of the 2004 champion beer of Great Britain Pale Rider. Dave’s new venture into the world of real ale brewing and the opening of a second bar, Champs Sports Bar on Eccleshall Road saw Dave become a full time entrepreneur.

Dave Wickett’s Qualities to be an Entrepreneur:

• Passion. Don’t enter a market that you don’t have a passion for.
• Confidence. Entering into a market with established incumbents you have to be confident you can do it better than them.
• Take risks. You have to be prepared to be a risk taker, but to be successful you will need to be right more than wrong.
• Decision making. In your business you have to be prepared to take decisions and accept the consequences.
• Learn from others. Read about others that have done it before. Some good starting points are Grinding it Out by Ray Kroc , the man that took over small scale McDonalds and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world; and Business as Usual by Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop.
• Delegate. You have to be willing to delegate and hand over your dreams to other people, but they have to be the right people who will share your dream.
• Listen. Listen to others and their thoughts, but in the end it is YOUR decision.

Click here for more details on the Skill Build program, forthcoming sessions and how to get involved.