* An enterprise summit to help create a culture of economic value through creative enterprise

Innovation is the most critical success factor for businesses today. However companies need people that are pioneering, or better put, entrepreneurial themselves in order to be inventive. To this intent, Enterprise Education is now increasingly being hailed as a legitimate tool for wealth creation for a nation’s economy; where its aim is to develop in individuals (particularly the young) a set of skills and attitudes that will allow them to be both job creators and highly employable individuals, and help them contribute to the economy through innovative value and knowledge creation.

The British Council is currently supporting Sri Lankan universities to develop their Enterprise Education, and actively promote Graduate Entrepreneurship through education partnerships with leading entrepreneurial universities in the UK, and conducting a myriad of enterprise education programmes and activities.

In partnership with SLASSCOM and with the sponsorship of Mobitel, one such programme organised by the British Council on this subject, “Looking Forward”, will take place on March 05, 2010 at the Galadari Hotel. This event will seek to communicate and educate on the importance of developing and sustaining entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka by looking at other countries and benchmarking how they’ve created wealth for their country and the industry by supporting an entrepreneurial culture.

Said Gill Westaway, Country Director, British Council, Sri Lanka: “Partnerships between universities in the UK and Sri Lanka will lead to significant development of enterprise education in Sri Lanka at an institutional level. However Sri Lanka needs to develop a support mechanism to sustain such development, especially beyond initial funding, and also to ensure the sustainability of developing an Entrepreneurial Culture within Sri Lankan universities and thereby produce future employers who will create economic value through creative and innovative enterprise. This is what we at the British Council hope to do with ‘Looking Forward’.”

The enterprise summit will feature key influential and knowledgeable speakers on this topic; Ian Robertson, Chief Executive NCGE (The National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship), and board member of several organisations including a large UKuniversity. Past winner of Britain’s biggest business enterprise competition live on television, Ian will speak on how corporates will benefit by supporting enterprise education via increase in entrepreneurship and creation of more employable graduates.

Chandra Embuldeniya, Vice Chancellor, Uva Wellassa University, who is in partnership with various commercial and business organisations to promote enterprise education in his university, will provide insights on the benefits companies can gain by working with universities and supporting enterprise education, such as outsourcing their research, intellectual input and other requirements to these universities.

Simon Brown, Chair for Enterprise Educators UK (the national network for enterprise educators) and Director of the Southampton Business School,Southampton Solent University, will speak on the role companies can play to incubate ideas, such as funding start ups and holding shares in the company, etc and other initiatives that will help foster an entrepreneurial culture in Sri Lanka.

Said Gill Westaway, Country Director, British Council, Sri Lanka: “Most governments of developed countries today take a heightened interest in the potential contribution of enterprise education to economic wealth creation and the promotion of self-employment as a legitimate work option. In fact, the British government has gone so far as to make Enterprise education (EE) compulsory in the English school curriculum. While acknowledging that not everyone can be entrepreneurs, we do believe that anyone can be taught to be more enterprising, and this learning must start early – in schools. We hope that ‘Looking Forward’ will successfully cultivate enterprise capability in Sri Lanka, actively supported by better financial capability and economic and business understanding.”