Cedar and TTP Group collaboration helps drive the Entrepreneurial University of the Year

In a glittering awards ceremony at the Grosvenor Hotel in London’s West End last Thursday, Anglia Ruskin University was named The Times Higher Education Entrepreneurial University of the Year 2014. Within the Lord Ashcroft International Business School, a strategic partnership between the Centre for Enterprise Development and Research (CEDAR) and TTP Group (TTP), one of Cambridge’s star technology innovation companies, has been helping to drive the entrepreneurial agenda within the university.

 

Peter Taylor, co-founder and CEO of TTP Group, has been Chair of CEDAR since its inception four years ago and has played a central role in many of CEDAR’s entrepreneurial activities. From establishing a new School for Entrepreneurship and Management in Romania catalysing 132 new startups, helping entrepreneurial businesses in South Africa to prosper and expand overseas to a new contract due to start in February 2015 to help the National Agency for Innovation and Research in Uruguay to become more entrepreneurial in their approach.

Closer to home, TTP has been involved in all three aspects of CEDAR’s activities: teaching, research and enterprise development. Peter Taylor has helped to judge the CEDAR Big Pitch student pitching competition where £18,000 is awarded to help students start their businesses, and he also formed part of the CEDAR Enterprise Fellowship Scheme which has awarded £120,000 backed up by free mentoring through CEDAR’s entrepreneur in residence network to 14 start-up businesses within the Cambridge region. One of the start-up businesses in the region supported through the CEDAR scheme, Syndicate Rooms, has established itself as one of the most innovative crowd-funding sites, now backed by multiple business angels.

Peter Taylor commented ‘The award of Entrepreneurial University of the Year to ARU is a fantastic achievement and I am proud of the role we have been able to play through CEDAR to help make this happen. I am passionate about enterprise education, and finding a way of bringing our entrepreneurial expertise at TTP into the university in collaboration with CEDAR has produced significant benefits for the students. It is great that this has now been recognised nationally by the Times Higher Education award.’

Professor Lester Lloyd-Reason, Director of CEDAR, added “There is much talk of the need for closer collaboration and engagement between universities and entrepreneurial businesses and I think the partnership between CEDAR and TTP is a fantastic example of how this can work in practice. There is much common ground between us both and together we are able to challenge thinking, create thought leadership and help shape the future through a shared entrepreneurial mindset. Our students and staff at Anglia Ruskin University and entrepreneurial businesses both within the region and internationally through our project work have all benefitted from this successful collaboration between CEDAR and one of the great innovation technology businesses in the world, the TTP Group’.

About CEDAR
The Centre for Enterprise Development and Research (CEDAR) sits within the Lord Ashcroft International Business School at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK. CEDAR comprises a unique mix of leading academics and world-class entrepreneurs with a focus on blending theory and practice to create knowledge, improve understanding and challenge thinking in the area of enterprise and entrepreneurial management. It undertakes a wide range of regional, nation and international work in the areas of teaching, research and enterprise development. In 2013 CEDAR became the first UK University Enterprise Centre to be made an Institute for Enterprise and Entrepreneurs (IOEE) Centre of Excellence.
For more information please contact:
Prof Lester Lloyd-Reason
Tel: 01223 363271
lester.lloyd-reason@anglia.ac.uk
For more information about CEDAR visit: www.anglia.ac.uk/cedar



Read more

Looking for something specific?