An event with remarkable speakers, experienced business leaders, and advice to help SMEs scale-up and unlock growth

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Charnwood Campus is delighted to be hosting an event as part of Leicester Business Festival to provide expert advice to life sciences businesses on how to successfully scale and grow.

 

Taking place on 9 November from 10am to 12pm in the Nucleus Conference Room at Charnwood Campus Science, Innovation and Technology Park, the event will feature talks from experts and leaders from across the life sciences industry, a panel discussion, and networking opportunities.

 

Recognising that there are more pressures on businesses than ever before, Charnwood Campus has collaborated with a number of business leaders to create the ‘Growing and Scaling your business’ event: the first of a series planned for 2021/2022.

 

The event is designed to connect life sciences SMEs to companies that have successfully scaled, to drive knowledge exchange between successful entrepreneurs and business experts and start to develop a local community of expertise to accelerate growth and scaling. The event is a great opportunity for SMEs to meet fellow business owners and find out about the support available to help them grow.

 

Dr Nik Kotecha OBE, Chairman of Morningside Pharmaceuticals and the Panel Chair, said: “Leicestershire is home to a thriving community of health, care and life sciences businesses, which are delivering ground-breaking work that will become the success stories of tomorrow. Much of the county’s future growth is in the hands of SMEs, which have yet to scale up their innovative ideas and operations. This event will enable delegates to hear first-hand from business leaders who have successfully achieved this, and will provide a wide-range of help, support and advice to securing long-term success.”

 

Gosia Khrais, Commercial Director at Charnwood Campus said: “Owning and running a successful business is challenging. Building a scalable business is even more difficult. I am very pleased that we are able to bring together exceptional business leaders that will talk about their experiences and share their invaluable insights. It is definitely not an LBF event to miss.”

 

Commenting on the event, Head of Business Development at Charnwood Campus, Dr Lucy Alexander, said: “Leicestershire and surrounding areas have a healthy and large population of life sciences SMEs, and life science is a priority sector for the region. Data from The ScaleUp Annual Review 2020* shows that scaling life science business is exceptionally difficult. 64 percent of UK life sciences companies have used equity investment to grow, 54 percent have received innovation grants, and 32 percent have been spun-out from academic institutions—that’s ten times the rate across all sectors – yet only 9 percent have achieved 20 percent scale-up status.”

 

All participants at the event will receive a place on our exclusive follow-up event: Life Sciences Scale-Up Masterclass with MD of ActionCOACH Loughborough and UK Number 1 Coach, Matt Bull. This event will break down the key areas that businesses looking to scale should focus on, and all attendees will receive a complimentary one-to-one coaching session with Matt.

 

The Leicester Business Festival is the region’s biggest annual business event, and takes place annually over a fortnight across Leicester and Leicestershire. Local businesses and organisations are behind the events, which aim to offer help and support, educate, share information and knowledge or create forums for networking, engagement and business growth.

 

Event schedule

 

10.00- 10.10: Event welcomeDr Nik Kotecha OBE, Chief Executive Officer, Morningside Pharmaceuticals Ltd. & Gosia Khrais, Commercial and Marketing Director, Charnwood Campus.

 

10.10 – 10.25: From academic curiosity to industrial drug discovery and development, Mark Chadwick – Chief Commercial Officer Charnwood Molecular. An award winning local CRO which has been providing synthetic Chemistry support for over 20 years.

 

10.25 – 10.40: Leadership, entrepreneurship and growth, Byron Dixon MBE – Founder and CEO of Micro-Fresh®, Byron Dixon started the global, anti-bacterial brand over 15 years ago. Today, the brand is used as an ‘added value’ by over 50 retailers such as Emirates, Next and John Lewis & Partners. It now serves as the ‘go-to’ brand for innovation-conscious retailers that want to incorporate freshness into their products.

 

10.40 – 10.55: Expanding your business abroad, what are the challenges? Sander ten Veldhuijs – Lead Senior Innovation and Growth Specialist, Innovate UK EDGE.

 

10.55 – 11.10: Your finance options for growth, Lewis Stringer – Senior Manager, UK Network Team, British Business Bank – a government-owned business development bank dedicated to making finance markets work better for smaller businesses.

 

11.10 – 11.20: Developing the infrastructure framework for business growth, Dr Lucy Alexander – Head of Business Development and Senior Business Development Manager at Charnwood Campus.

 

11.20 – 11.30: Scaling Up Your Business – What Next? Matt Bull – MD and Business Coach of ActionCOACH Loughborough.

 

11.30 – 12.00: Panel discussion Mark Chadwick, Byron Dixon, Lewis Stringer, Dr Darren Clark, CEO Medilink Midlands.

 

12.00 – 12.30: Light lunch and networking

 

To register your place at the event, please click here.

 

The Leicester Business Festival has been running since 2015 and sees hundreds of events and thousands of attendees. The Festival shines a spotlight on Leicester and Leicestershire, demonstrating the region’s business strengths, innovation, and highlighting its huge investment potential.

 

* Source: 2020 Scaleup Leaders’ Views – ScaleUp Institute

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