A look back at the success of this year’s Leicester Business Festival

This year’s Leicester Business Festival (LBF) has been another enormous success, with more businesses getting involved and more attendees than ever before.

As headline partner for the Festival for three years running, Leicester Castle Business School (LCBS) is proud to have supported its growth.  

Compared to 2015 when the Leicester Business Festival began, Leicester’s business landscape has undergone dramatic change. Today there is increased inward investment - major companies like IBM and PRS have moved to the city - exciting new sectors such as space technology have emerged, Leicester’s Business Improvement District (BID) has been launched and work has begun on new developments at Everards Meadows and the Waterside.

Leicester itself has also won accolades – it was named in the Top Ten Cities for Growth Index, the best place in England to launch a start-up and the top place in the UK for tech start-ups. The number of businesses which survive for more than five years is above the national average.

Professor Dana Brown, Pro Vice Chancellor (Enterprise)/Dean, Faculty of Business and Law at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) said the festival, which is driven by businesses throughout Leicester and Leicestershire, had played a vital role in bringing about these changes.

She said: “I do not believe that it is a coincidence that there has been this upward momentum since the launch of Leicester Business Festival. It has brought people together who all share a passion for Leicester and Leicestershire, who know the benefits of living and working here. I think there is so much to be proud of and the Festival has played a big part in that.”

“For us, it has allowed us to understand the business community better, to make the connections and learn what businesses need from an education partner.”

Latest figures show that the Festival is successfully reaching those business people who do not attend corporate events. Some 47% of people at LBF events had not previously been to a business event in the past six months. This influx of new faces allows new connections to be made and potentially, new deals to be struck.

DMU was among a staggering 1,280 businesses who were involved this year. A number of events were held to showcase the university’s work with the business community.

Examples included a sell-out session on procurement run by the university’s award-winning estates team, masterclasses on creating diverse talents and our graduate recruitment fair, which saw the region’s largest employers come to campus to find new talent.

But university staff also made it their mission to attend as many different Festival events as possible, to hear new ideas, take part in debates on business issues or to make new contacts. Here some of our business services team choose their favourite events of this year’s Festival.

Simon Baines, Innovation Centre manager

Favourite events: Entrepreneurial Success in Leicester – Leicester Business Voice

This event provided some great case studies of successful entrepreneurs who have benefitted from working with both University of Leicester and De Montfort University to develop new innovations. It also gave an insight into new collaborative projects between DMU, UoL and other external partners which will create even more opportunities to support start-ups going forward.

Intellectual Property for your Business – The Innovation Centre

This practical workshop was over-subscribed and we received excellent feedback from attendees who took away first hand advice and guidance to benefit their business ventures.

Leena Demirci, Head of Postgraduate Professional Development, LCBS

Favourite events: Lego Serious Play run by System/Level

I was drawn to the event as I’ve always been interested in learning through play (and my kids love Lego)

My role at DMU involves trying to bridge the gap between university and the world of work, so I was fascinated by the fact that this methodology has been used to facilitate senior leadership workshops for many FTSE 500 companies and the feedback has been positive.

I wanted to explore using Lego to support activities around career planning and work readiness training, and thought there was an opportunity to bring play into the classroom to help prepare students for their future careers.

Adele Brown, Head of Careers and Employability

Favourite event: Let’s Talk About Equality run by Freeths and Eileen Richards Recruitment

This was a brilliant event and a mentally stimulating start to the day. How can Leicester and Leicestershire businesses improve their attraction and retention of great talent? Are great potential employees being lost because businesses are inadvertently putting barriers in the way?

Equality and diversity values, built into recruitment and retention, are key to attracting the best and excluding no one. But what does ‘diversity’ mean? Do we have fixed ideas of what a ‘finance manager’ looks like, and does this ‘mirrortocracy’ mean we’re working in the dark? The solution isn’t necessarily about doing lots of new things – we don’t need ping pong tables to make our businesses attractive to a diverse young population. It’s about doing what we already do differently. Research, shared learning and student/business dialogue will be the key components of a project stemming from this captivating event that was very well attended and raised many questions to answer over the coming months.

Helen Donnellan, Director of Business Engagement, DMU

Favourite event: Innovation in Construction, run by LCBS

The panel discussion on 31 October around Innovation in the construction industry was fascinating. The sector has long been regarded as the bell weather of the UK economy and the topic had featured earlier in the month in a Financial Times article which described the idea that the construction industry was entering its “Uber” period. With millions of pounds currently being invested into schemes across Leicester, industry experts came together to discuss why the time is now for regeneration in the city. The panel discussed how a digital transformation within the construction industry is no longer simply an option, but a necessity.

The utilisation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology has fast become industry standard and Virtual Reality (VR) is now commonplace, with a revelation on how many companies now have BIM caves! There was also discussion on what is coming next and how digital giants are getting involved in the discussion and what impact new technology may well have on the supply chain.

The construction and property industries are pillars of growth and therefore are of strategic importance to the economy, both UK-wide and on a regional and local level and this discussion highlighted that Leicester is at the cutting edge of this revolution.