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About FLUX

The Basics

FLUX is the UK's largest inter-university enterprise event drawing the most enterprising teams from across the UK together to compete against each other in an enterprise challenge. It is a fast paced business competition which will take you through the process of setting up and planning a business.

Working in a team of six, you will work with a real-life business challenge that you are presented with at the start of the event. This challenge is delivered to each team in the form of a business scenario which describes a specific business situation that the subject organisation has to overcome. In the past these challenges have included:

• Managing geographic expansion
• Increasing market share
• Managing an ethical profile
• Changing customer attitudes

You will develop a strategy related to the specific challenge over the day using Xing and a series of workshops. You'll get the chance to bounce your ideas off business experts in key business areas before pitching your strategy to a judging panel.

You'll be put under pressure throughout two days of intense activity but you'll enjoy it hugely and participating will help you get your ideal job when you graduate - or even see what it's like to be your own boss.

As with all Working Knowledge events a range of business experts will be in hand (with their business heads screwed on) to give you a helping hand and support you with their business knowledge.

You aren't judged on what you already know about business, but how you perform as a team, how well you use the advice given, and whether you play to your strengths and recognise your weaknesses.

No matter what degree subject you are taking, you can enter FLUX. It's not just for business or economics students. Last year students from over 170 degree subjects took part.

Last Year

Last year's final was an intense and fast-paced event run over 2 days.

On arrival each team was allocated a business challenge developed by businesses in the SW region each of which were started and run on an ethical basis. Each business had a slightly different challenge that it was looking to address and the students assumed the role of the management team charged with coming up with an appropriate solution.

Using a wide range of resources including short workshops on marketing, finance, people and operations, the teams developed their own solutions to the challenges and then tested them out with help from local business people in a series of consultation meetings.

Each team then went on to pitch their refined solutions Dragon's Den-style back to a panel made up of the same business people. The winners from each stream then had to prepare for an unscheduled press conference where they had to handle questions on the fly about a serious event that would affect their business.

The winning team was selected by popular vote and was duly crowned FLUX 2009 National champions, receiving a total of £3,000 in prize money.

"I've learned a huge amount already from taking part in the heats to qualify for the final. When you take part in a FLUX event, you are completely immersed in it. It doesn't feel like an exercise, it feels like a real-life situation that is very pressured and hectic. It's a fantastic way for students to improve their business skills while having a lot of fun."
Gus Palmer, University of Plymouth

"Try it - it's exciting, stressful, fun, horrible and good, all at the same time. It's brilliant."
Kirsty Riley, Manchester Metropolitan University

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