Green Gown Awards 2020 - Manchester Metropolitan University - Winner

WINNER (Large Institution): Young Enterprise: How entrepreneurship and sustainability combine to form the DNA of successful start-up businesses 

Our Young Enterprise (YE) Start-Up programme has developed the entrepreneurial capabilities combined with sustainability credentials of 370 student start-up businesses in the 20 years since its inception in 2001. In total 1850 students have participated in YE, 55% of whom are the first generation of their family to attend university, the programme therefore acts as a conduit for wider social impact within our local communities.   

Student teams ideate new business concepts and business models to launch and trade creative new products and services.  

Mentored by ‘Dragons’ from local business and industry, the teams are also supported by our Green Dragon, who selected Grovio as our Sustainability Student Business Award winner in 2020. Grovio, went on to compete at the National Finals of the YE (2020), joining Flav (2019), Hey Cane (2018) and WotCorn (2017), matched by outstanding individual performances from Shankar Jalota (FLAV) named Young Enterprise Student of the Year in 2019 and Haydor Ali-Ismail (HeyCane) winning the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship’s Enterprise Learner of the Year in 2018. 

Top 3 learnings:

1. We worked with student enterprises to build entrepreneurship and sustainability into the DNA of their businesses. 
2. We developed the ‘Dragons’ concept as a fun way to engage local business practitioners. 
3. We learnt how to scale-up benefits to 1850 students while maintaining their engagement with a real-world start-up experience. 

Videos

• Video #1 (click to hide)