Students give Scottish companies the EDGE

The EDGE programme matches teams of students with companies from the west of Scotland in real life business environments.

Now in its fourth year EDGE, delivered by Scottish Enterprise, stands for ‘encouraging dynamic global entrepreneurs’. The programme brings together students from leading Scottish universities, fifth year school pupils from across the west of Scotland and international students from universities in the United States, Poland, Canada and China.

Jack Perry, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, joined a number of the project’s partners to welcome the participants at this afternoon’s ceremony.

Over the next eight weeks, 144 students from 11 different countries and 96 Scottish students together with 48 local companies will participate in the EDGE programme, with the common goal of helping the Scottish economy to grow.

The students will work in project teams with the businesses to develop their entrepreneurial skills and support the business growth of the participating companies.

The businesses represent a number of key sectors from traditional engineering companies through to cutting edge technology businesses including life sciences software development and telecommunications.

Each company has submitted business growth projects from a diverse range of ideas including market research, new product or market development and process redesign. The students will work in self-styled consultancy teams to deliver the projects with the help of a number of business support experts.

Jack Perry said: “All the companies signed up for this programme have growth potential but felt they could benefit from the insight and fresh talents to explore new ways of innovating or developing new working practices that would improve their business performance.

“The mix of talents, perspectives and experience being brought together over the next eight weeks is a crucial factor in ensuring EDGE delivers the greatest possible benefit in terms of learning and development for the individual students as well as economic returns for the companies and for Scotland.”

EDGE 2008 aims to build on the successful 2007 programme when participating companies reported increased turnover of more than £3 million as a result of their projects.

Liz Connolly, regional operations director at Scottish Enterprise added: “EDGE isn’t just about work, it exposes international and Scottish students to different cultures and it is this cultural element of the programme that helps to broaden their exposure to different attitudes and approaches to business, while at the same time showcasing Scotland as a great place to live, work and do business.”