Entrepreneurs talk ‘green’

The seminar was organised by ‘These Young Minds’, a service-based social enterprise that provides an inclusive platform for stakeholders to learn about corporate responsibility issues.

Professor Alan Barrell, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University, opened the evening by connecting the global issue of climate change to local opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Trewin Restorick, the CEO of Global Action Plan, told the audience how he started the environmental charity, an award-winning result-oriented environmental change influential, seventeen years ago, with a few thousand pounds. The organisation now employs more than sixty employees and generates over six million pounds annually.

Speakers Sak Nayagam, Managing Director of Climate Change Services in Europe, Africa and Latin America and Darren Strange, the sustainability lead at Microsoft, spoke about the personal journeys they had taken to address climate change issues.

All speakers stressed the opportunities that the current focus of regulations on mitigating climate change brings to entrepreneurs, in the shape of new technology and green products.

The panel then took questions from the audience, which centred on issues such as the number of green jobs available to graduate students, the opportunities and threats to small businesses in the green economy and how to achieve behavioural change on climate change issues.

Sak Nayagam, Managing Director of Climate Change Services in Europe, Africa and Latin America said ‘It was a genuine pleasure working with ‘These Young Minds’ on their recent event at Cambridge University. The topics presented and panel questions on the transition to the low carbon economy were stimulating for both the speakers and audience alike.”

Prof. Alan Barrell, Resident Entrepreneur at Judge Business School, said: ‘These Young Minds’ have scored a great success with this major event – focussing on the green economy and what entrepreneurs can do to help direct the citizens of our planet towards sanity and a more secure future. To have a major corporation such as Microsoft engaged with students, start ups and ‘the next generation’ in an environment like the Engineering Department, University of Cambridge – was a great feat for a relatively new organisation’.

Alim Abubakre, Founder and Director of ‘These Young Minds’ said that the group conceived the event ‘Entrepreneurship in the Green Economy’ to inspire great ideas that will provide life-changing actions for society.

Sponsors for this event included Microsoft and Cambridge University Press.