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Recently there has been growing interest in an alternate business model, social enterprise. This is a different way of doing business that trades for a social purpose whereby the social or environmental aims of the business are of equal importance to its commercial activities. Consequently the skills required for running a successful social enterprise combine those typical of enterprise activities generally with a strong motivation and passion for social improvement. We have found that this aspect is useful in engaging researchers because at the heart of social enterprise is a strong commitment to achieving a better society, a motivation that resonates with that which typically drives the research agenda and researchers themselves. This collaborative project with Vitae has been successful in developing written and associated video materials to explore enterprise skills with early career researchers. There are plans to disseminate the resources via Vitae as part of the ongoing move to produce development resources that are freely available to HEIs as part of the research skills development agenda, this is likely to be in January 2011.

The North East of England has many exciting opportunities to offer researchers and are keen to retain excellent graduates from North East Universities. This conference gives researchers a chance to discover what the North East can offer them outwith the university sector.

The Northern Enterprise Schools Consortium aims to create a series of 3 to 4 residential workshops on both sides of the Pennines annually. It utilises Knowledge transfer, social enterprise and intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial activity to deliver a number of career skill needs to early career researchers. It is a collaborative exercise between the universities of Liverpool, Manchester, Lancaster, Leeds, Salford, Durham, and York.

The Social Media sessions demonstrated a successful integration of a student-led initiative within a formal graduate training provision. The initiative underlined the importance of engaging PhD students in their own learning and training needs, in both sharing expertise with peers and in contributing to their own professional development. In doing so, it demonstrated to other postgraduate researchers how they might utilise their own areas of expertise to develop further student-led initiatives.

Open competition to fund projects relating to research staff development

Three-day business plan competition for researchers to produce a business plan for an imaginary start-up company, engineering-based.