The Centre for Enterprise (CfE) in Manchester Metropolitan University Business School (MMUBS) was launched in March 2001 to bring together activities related to entrepreneurship and managing SMEs. During the last eight years, CfE staff have used funding from a wide range of sources to support entrepreneurs and established smaller firms in the North West of England.

The mission of the CfE is to create and transfer knowledge to develop enterprise and entrepreneurship within and beyond the University, support the start-up and development of small and social enterprise and inform enterprise policy.

The CfE is North West provider for the New Entrepreneur Scholarship (NES), originally an initiative by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his former role as Chancellor. Since 2000, NES has helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs set up new businesses in the region.

The CfE is a research centre as well as a mechanism for supporting small businesses and we have 20 staff engaged on a number of externally-funded projects. All research staff disseminate the results of their work through participation in major conferences and publication in a wide range of academic

journals.

The CfE has developed the MSc Entrepreneurial Practice, which has run since October, 2008. This innovative course operates within the Innospace Graduate Business Incubator and it will help students to develop the personal and business skills needed to run a successful business start-up. Students will also have the opportunity to actively run their businesses within Innospace whilst on the course.

Ultimately, our objective is to bring together practitioners, policy-makers and academics who are interested in improving the environment for entrepreneurship and the competitiveness of smaller firms. As a consequence, we engage with a wide range of regional and national stakeholders, including key institutions such as the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE), the British Academy of Management (BAM), The Princes Trust and the National Federation of Enterprise Agencies (NFEA)

Please explore our website to find out more about the exciting work we are doing. We look forward to hearing from you if you have any queries or want to become involved in our work.

Dr Julia Rouse
Acting Director of the CfE