Sharp Project

Why 2011 should be a great year for north west entrepreneurs

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Digital North West 0

Despite talk of economic doom and gloom, here are just 3 reasons why I think 2011 will be a great year for entrepreneurs and fast growth businesses across the north west:

  1. The North West Fund is here to provide £185m of equity and loan funding making investments of £50,000 to £2m into fast growth businesses across the North West. This includes specialist funding for local emerging sectors such as digital and creative, biomedical plus energy / environmental.  Just the spark that businesses have been looking for to help them achieve their ambitious growth plans – I look forward to working with my clients to make this happen in 2011.
  2. MediaCityUK finally launches. A £650m new city built to service creative and digital companies. Large parts of the BBC are on their way; ITV is also coming and, more excitingly, a hot-bed of exciting new talent and businesses should flourish to support these Goliaths of the creative sector. (I look forward to taking a trip around it to check on progress this Friday).
  3. Despite public sector cuts and the demise of the NWDA, local initiatives like Techcelerate, Manchester Digital, Sharp Project, Daresbury Innovation Campus plus many others will step up to the plate in delivering access to services and support for new businesses – and further new initiatives will no doubt emerge to plug gaps as they emerge.

This is an exciting time to be living and working in the north west. Make no bones about it, its going to be tough plus I am mindful that we need to continue to build solid links with London and internationally, but so long as we can get our own entrepreneurial infrastructure firing in the north west then we should be in good shape for 2011.

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Collaboration of digital businesses challenges the future of the firm

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Digital North West 1

Digital businesses are increasingly setting up shop in tech hubs or shared workspaces – the merits of the Sharp Project, Pie Factory and Media:City were all discussed at length at the recent BVCA Digital Age event held in Manchester.

Much of these initiatives are aimed at providing cost effective office premises for those fledging businesses which might not otherwise be able to afford a ‘normal’ office space plus they often have access to state-of-the-art technology and superspeed broadband access.

The merits of such initiatives have been well publicised but less so is the potential importance of housing these businesses under one roof and, more importantly, what the potential for collaboration might mean for future business structures?

What if small businesses seize the opportunity to network and co-create on projects? What if micro digital businesses pull together as deep specialists to provide best of breed combined solutions to beat off the competition provided by larger established agencies? If digital businesses really can collaborate seamlessly to beat the bigger boys then might this mean that the importance of separate firms or company structures becomes less important to the point that the concept of the firm starts to dissolve?

If so, would this be a step forward?  What do you think? Could digital businesses lead us into a new era for the way we do business in the 21st Century?

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