Graduation

Congratulations to all our brilliant Management and Entrepreneurship MSc and doctoral students; Dr Syed Yaqzan, Dr Mark Hagar and Dr Khalid Al Araimi on this well-deserved achievement. 

We couldn't be prouder of the hard work, dedication, and resilience you have shown throughout your studies. This is just the beginning of an exciting entrepreneurship journey filled with endless possibilities and opportunities. 

Small Business Charter 2023 Excellence Award

To recognise Cranfield University's contribution to entrepreneurship, we were shortlisted as a finalist for the inaugural Small Business Charter 2023 Excellence Award in the ‘Outstanding support for student enterprise and entrepreneurship’ category. The award ceremony took place in the House of Lords and was hosted by Cranfield alumnus Lord Karan Bilimoria. For more information about what Cranfield does to support its students, watch the video below.

Fellowship announcement

Dr Orsolya Ihasz has undertaken a fellowship with the Foundation of Science and Technology who provide insights and understanding of the challenges associated with the UK's research and innovation system. They also explore opportunities to build links with government, universities, large industry, SMEs and research charities to strengthen the research development and innovation landscape.

Orsi's fellowship seeks to build cross sectorial dialogues to improve the potential and mobility of researchers and postdocs to contribute to economic and social growth.

ISPIM Innovation Conference

Dr Zimu Xu and Dr Richard Adams attended XXXIV ISPIM Innovation Conference, held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to present their paper “A configurational paths framework towards institutionalising innovation: a systematic literature review using qualitative comparative analysis”.

Congratulations to Dr Jon Huete

Dr Jon Huete has been awarded The Arthur Lefebvre Prize for his thesis “Techno-Economic, Environmental and Risk Analysis of a Hydrogen Airliner Family Market Entry”, supervised by Professor Pericles Pilides and Dr Richard Adams as associate supervisor. The prize is awarded for the most outstanding doctoral student within the field of Propulsion.

WSUP hosted a webinar

In June, Dr Richard Adams and WSUP hosted a webinar attended by an international audience, entitled "Flush With Success: Scaling social enterprises to meet the world's sanitation challenges".

Spot the Prof.

In June, the whole team were delighted to celebrate that our wonderful Head of Strategy, Entrepreneurship & Sustainability (SES) and Director of the Bettany Centre, Stephanie Hussels has been appointed a Professor at Cranfield University. Congratulations Prof. Hussels on this very well deserved achievement!

Celebrating 15 Years of VentureDay

VentureDay 2023: Surviving and Thriving in Difficult Times was a great success! We brought together business thinkers and leaders at the forefront of their industries to share their wisdom on how SMEs can equip themselves in these turbulent times.
 
Together with the Cranfield Sustainable Business Group we covered everything from embracing innovation and reimagining fundraising to embedding mental health in your culture and sustainability in your growth. A special thank you again to all our incredible speakers and to everyone who contributed to the day.

Start-Up Weekends

Over 70 (student, researcher, alumni and staff members) attended our Start-Up Weekends to explore their business ideas and pitch these to an expert panel to receive feedback. A massive thank you to all our mentors for joining us for the three days.

Navigating non-family CEO Succession Decisions: Online Workshops

In May, Professor Stephanie Hussels and Manish Singh hosted two online workshops in collaboration with the Family Business Research Foundation presenting insights on their research on overcoming the challenges of non-family CEO succession decisions and this will inform the Family Business Challenges Guide, which will be published in 2024.  

House of Lords by WSUP (Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor)

In May, Dr Richard Adams was welcomed to the House of Lords by WSUP (Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) Chairman, Lord Paul Boateng. Richard will shortly be joining the WSUP board as the University’s representative.

ERC annual conference 2023

In June, Manish Singh attended the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) annual conference 2023 on the state of UK SMEs for a day of learning and networking with business owners, researchers, and policymakers. 

Welcome Week 2023

The Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Business Group welcomed all incoming students to campus at welcome week. We were delighted to meet so many aspiring entrepreneurs.

Speaker Series November 2023

Over 300 people attended our popular Entrepreneurship Speaker Series events in November. We kicked off the series with none other than Nick Bettany, son of Tim Bettany, the founder of the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship. We would like to extend our special thanks to our fabulous speakers. If you did not get a chance to attend one of these events, you can find the write-ups for them here.

Retrain Expo Excel

Thank you to everyone who dropped by our stand at the Retrain Expo last month! Connecting with so many new businesses was an absolute pleasure.

The Foundation for Science and Technology Future Leaders Conference!

We're thrilled to share that our amazing colleague, Dr Orsolya Ihasz, contributed on the panel at The Foundation For Science and Technology Future Leaders Conference discussing Risk and Resilience in the context of the future of work and AI.

Recent research updates

PhD researcher Natasha Allden presented her work on Technology Transfer at the Doctoral Consortium at World Open Innovation Conference in Bilbao.

PhD researcher Alejandro Terroba travelled from Argentina to Barcelona to present his paper “Answering the sustainability call: a qualitative systematic review on using management control systems to achieve sustainable goals” at the 12th Conference on Performance Measurement and Management Control.

With Farrukh Qureshi and Professor Asta Pundziene, colleagues at Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, Dr Richard Adams has had a paper published in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management - Appraising the transformation and future of Digital Multisided Platforms - A bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review.

Meet Dr Singh

We are delighted to announce that Christmas has come early for Manish Singh, who has completed his PhD!

Executive Education

In October we launched our first cohort of our new Executive Education programme, Help to Grow: Management Course.

Business Exit Programme

We launched our 2-day Business Exit Programme at Cranfield School of Management, in collaboration with our partners Azets, Mishcon de Reya LLP and OneWealth Ltd. A huge thank you to everyone involved!

Global Entrepreneurship Week #GEW2023

In November, we ran a series of events as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week to celebrate Entrepreneurship at Cranfield, promote the importance of an entrepreneurial mindset across campus, and make the community aware of what is on offer. In total, we ran nine events with 25 speakers and more than 556 attendees (SMEs, students and staff) participating. It was such a buzz!

Santander X UK Awards

Congratulations to one of our Cranfield Seed Fund recipients: Lambda agri on being Startup runner-up at the Santander X UK Awards 2023. We wish you all the very best for the global finals in Spain next year. Congratulations again from all of us at Cranfield!

Cranfield 50

We closed the year with our annual Cranfield 50 reception at 12 Hay Hill London. It was a wonderful opportunity to thank alumni, colleagues, and friends of the Bettany Centre for all their support throughout the year and catch up on what everybody has been doing. There was such a fantastic energy in the room! We are very privileged to have such a powerful network of entrepreneurs at Cranfield.