Make Your Mark

TODAY we find ourselves at the end of Enterprise Week 2006. If the publicity machine driving this Enterprise Week has not made itself heard to you, I'm sure it's not for lack of effort on the organisers' part, but more to do with what our broadcasters and editors believe we want to see and hear.

Their website www.starttalkingideas.org is packed full of events and information on enterprise.

Enterprise Week is a big event. And it's an important one too for a country with an economy that owes so much of its strength to the entrepreneurial spirit of our great industrialists, inventors and downright opportunists.

For example, more than 20,000 pupils, students and employees have this week joined the UK's biggest ever, live enterprise competition. The Make Your Mark Challenge is intended to unleash young people's enterprising ideas on a massive scale, and is backed by leading entrepreneurs and TV programmes like Hollyoaks and Newsround.

Make Your Mark Challenge is Enterprise Week's mass participation flagship event. This year nearly 3,000 teams from schools, universities, further education colleges and workplaces are taking part, making it twice the size of last year's challenge.


And the action is not confined to schools and colleges. Some of the UK's most recognised companies, including British Gas, Royal Mail and Cafédirect are among the 136 teams taking part in the workplace challenge

And here in Merseyside we are playing a major part too.

The campaign "Make Your Mark in Liverpool" was launched at a high profile event at FACT in the city centre this week.

On display were some of the region's best young talent including singers and performers and a demonstration of a computer game developed by students at St Margaret's High School with the support of local real-time interactive 3D software solutions company Lateral Visions.

The campaign aims to promote enterprise culture for young people.

So, why does it matter? Because we need bright ideas and entrepreneurial talent to drive our economy, arguably more so now than at any other time.

The week's not over yet, so ask yourself what your business has contributed.