Students give Scottish companies the EDGE

A unique international business and enterprise programme was officially launched at a ceremony held at St. Andrew’s in the Square in Glasgow.

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

 Now in its fifth 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.

 Liz Connolly, regional operations director at 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 participants from 7 different countries, including 96 from Scotland 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.

 Liz Connolly 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.”

 Liz Connolly 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.”

 Since 2005 the EDGE programme has assisted some 100 companies across the west of Scotland and supported the learning and development of almost 300 participants.