Lord Stafford comes to the East Midlands!

As you may be aware, last November, NTU SPEED was involved in the 1^st Festival of Innovation expo at the NEC. This was organised in conjunction with the Lord Stafford Awards (LSA). Unfortunately as the LSA were based in the West Midlands we were unable to enter and possibly win any of the awards. Undeterred, we gave it our best effort and, I believe, put on the best stand and had the best turn out of the show!

As a result of this effort (I wish, not really!), this year the East Midlands will have it’s own Lord Stafford Awards. The LSA are moving from the West Midlands initially into the East, before being expanded across the country. They will give £5k per company winner + considerable PR (to judge from the West Midlands event)

All of our SPEED businesses are potentially able to apply to these awards as, through their connection with The Hive they are “in association with an East Midland’s university.” There is a strong desire from the University for NTU to figure prominently in the applications, so you can expect plenty of help and support!

There are prizes of £5k each award and the deadline to return to us of Friday 25^th April.

I encourage you to look at this link for the LSA and if appropriate, contact me to get an application form, which we will fill in together. Before applying make sure you have read the judges criteria, under which the awards will be made, and try to see where your business fits in.

PLEASE RETURN YOUR APPLICATION TO ME so that I can co-ordinate those from SPEED

GOOD LUCK!

I have been getting the Enterquest newsletter for the past six months or so. I often find it useful and sometimes inspiring. I especially like the Just One Word thread, always on the look out for new words and phrases, that's me! Check it out and sign up for the newsletter if you feel so inclined. I can't see if you can sign up for an RSS feed from it, but if you see it, please let me know!

We are off to Thirsty Thursday tonight, it's my first so I don't really know what to expect. Sim, from Bantum Clothing is speaking so I guess it should be fun. I'll let you know. Harriet from the SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) team has been promoting it through her blog. She got inspired by Antonio Gould's seminar on Blogging that we held here in November. I think she's found out that a blog can be a hard slog. But it's the same with any promotion, 'if you throw enough balls at enough coconuts, you'll win a fish!'

That's not mine, it's from Men Behaving Badly Sorry!

pics

Financials

Here's a knotty problem.

How do you set your price? Do you charge what your competitors are charging, or maybe a little less? What about a simple mark up on your costs? Simple, if you have a product to sell, not so easy if you're a service provider. What about saying 'OK, I want to earn £xxx a month. I can do three jobs per month, so will charge £x per job and earn enough'

All valid ways of working out your price. BUT, what if you can't find out what your competitors are charging, what if you have nothing in the market to compare it with, what if...?

What do YOU think?