The Business School has launched a new Entrepreneurship Programme that pairs every participating team with a founder-in-residence and gives them a full year to take an idea from concept to launch.

The programme is open to students from any faculty, not just business — a deliberate choice, since the best ventures usually pair a technical idea with someone who can build a business around it.

How the programme works

Teams are supported across the whole journey rather than dropped at the pitch stage:

• A dedicated enterprise studio open to teams around the clock
• A founder-in-residence mentoring each team through the year
• Seed funding and legal support for the most promising ventures
• Introductions to the university's alumni and investor network

We did not want another business-plan competition. We wanted students to actually ship something, learn what breaks, and fix it — with people beside them who have done it before.

The programme director

Applications for the first cohort are open now, with places allocated on the strength of the idea and the team rather than academic grades alone.