Our enterprise track record

We draw on our core teaching and research strengths to create an inspirational environment for enterprise, innovation and creativity.

We're proud of our track record in encouraging and promoting student enterprise; in fostering research ideas that have both commercial and social applications; and in creating opportunities for business collaboration.

Find out how we promote enterprise at Plymouth.

Getting students involved in enterprise

Benefit from courses that offer a wide variety of placement opportunities allowing you to gain essential work-based experience during your studies.

Get involved in FLUX - a fast paced national competition for students to work in a team to plan and present a business strategy for a real business scenario.

Expand your enterprise and employability skills - we embed these into our academic and professional courses to give you a head start in your future career. You'll also have access to our Careers and Employability service who are dedicated to offering careers advice, support and opportunities to all students and graduates.

Joel Gibbard, Robotics graduate

For my final year project, I designed a low-cost robotic prosthetic hand for amputees. The University funded the project and I hope that further work could lead to a revolution in advanced prosthetics seeing them used more widely and in poorer countries

Joel has taken out no patents on his design. He wants anyone to be able to produce and sell the hands cheaply.

Research and development

Staff and students benefit from support in commercialising their research ideas. This sees many spin out companies thriving at the Plymouth Science Park.

We've demonstrated our own entrepreneurial ambitions by establishing SERIO (Socio-economic Research and Intelligence Observatory).
We pride ourselves on our sustainability ethos and have won awards for our green track record. This ethos inspired the formation of the Sustainable Earth Institute, bringing together sustainability-related research activities across the University.

Business

We're one of the most successful universities in the UK delivering Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP).

Our Formation Zone is a dedicated pre-incubation space within the University campus that proactively supports and advises creative business start-ups, allowing access to university facilities and resources.

Our Business Challenge is an annual competition that helps launch and raise the profile of exciting and innovative new businesses. A recent winner, Anthony Jinman, set up Education Through Expeditions (ETE) an organisation that provides an educational web-based platform inspiring children of all ages to follow their own aspirations.

KTP for business

KTP is a partnership between a university and a company to work on a challenging and innovative project which will transfer new knowledge/expertise into the business and extend research.

Plymouth Enterprise Week

We play a pivotal role in the city's annual Plymouth Enterprise Week, a celebration of enterprise, sustainability and new ideas across the city. Every November, the City of Plymouth and Plymouth University hosts a programme packed full of events to contribute to what’s now known as Global Entrepreneurship Week.