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The 3P Business Creation Competition
Now is the time of year that we can all breathe a sigh of relief- after all we’ve done what we intended to do- proved the concept of the 3P competition. This time last year there was no 3P competition, some people were sceptical: now its success cannot be doubted. Today I sat in a room with our esteemed panel of judges as they struggled to pick a winner from an impressive standard and diversity of business plans. More heartening were the pitches the teams made, people stood in front of the panel performing above their nerves ably selling their businesses. Ironically I was pleased that people were nervous, that was a clear indicator of how much they had thrown themselves into the competition and wanted to win and get the financial support to start a business. This to me is a clear display that the 3P competition was a response to a need for an alternative to the £50K competition. Undoubtedly this competition is important; we face a great deal of social and environmental challenges in the world today. Further more the competition is timely, this type of competition is pioneering and coincides with projections that the environmental industry is the next ‘big thing’. Already we are attracting interest from other universities and organisations wishing to implement similar 3P strategies. We still have work to do to fine-tune the support to our entrants, but we hope 3P will become a brand as respected as the £50k. The 3P competition is not a stand-alone event; it comes in a large package with sparkly paper and a big bow. For this we send a BIG THANK YOU to; ALL our entrants for their enthusiasm and drive, Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning who have incorporated elements of 3P into their mainstream entrepreneurship course and superb training weekends, Coventry Enterprise who diversified their mentors to meet the needs of this years finalists and gave administrative support, the mentors, the judges who have taken valuable time out to support an unproven entity; John Elkington, Mary Archer, Ann Cotton, Charles Ainger, Polly Courtice, Helen Haugh, all those who helped with workshops, and our sponsors, in particular CMI, CLO (a special mention to Penny Wilson) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Nicola Dee, 3P Lead 2003-04
3P stands for People, Planet, Productivity. We are introducing this new business creation competition to cater for the needs of socially and environmentally explicit businesses which are either profit or non-profit. We are working closely with the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning to provide teaching support targeting the new competition. The process throughout the year will be the same as 50K but with some additional workshops in response to the particular needs of students entering the 3P competition. 50k and 3P competitions are not exclusive, you may enter both competitions since business plans for 50k and 3P are expected to be of equal quality.
The most recent addition to CUE's portfolio of high profile competitions, the 3P competition is also the competition with the most room to develop and grow. Having been a very exciting first year, the 3P has done a great deal of good and will go on to achieve a great deal more. However, improving upon such a professional and well publicised project will be difficult, if only because so much of the project was so well conceived initially. Nevertheless, despite this positive start, this coming year of 3P entrants can expect CUE to build upon this platform for a very exciting year. With increased marketing, sustained funding and more experienced mentors and managers alike, much of the 3P's development may appear transparent. Incremental changes in documentation, planning, structuring and organisation will be de rigeur. Aside from this, we also hope to implement many changes in accordance with CUE's developing philosophy of fashioning individuals into entrepreneurs by endowing them with specific skill-sets rather than focusing on the creation of institutions - which is of course to forget that institutions are merely conduits for individuals and a structure of social organisation. We also aim to learn and progress with other 3P style competitions across the UK and the world, and also, where possible, assist others with 3P style projects. Charlie Delingpole, 3P Lead 2004-05 .
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