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How the University is helping to support local entrepreneurs
03/03/2026
The 2026 Leicestershire Innovation Festival takes place over 9-13 March and once again the University of Leicester is a key player.
“The Festival has been running for several years now and it offers a series of workshops, seminars and conferences at different venues across the county,” explains Mat Hughes, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the University of Leicester School of Business. “All the events are free to attend, and they include things like growth, knowledge transfer, funding, volunteering, manufacturing, cybersecurity, digital, among many other topics that are important to everyone involved in business.”
As in previous years, the 2026 Festival aims to draw in a broad church of business leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, executives, academics and managers from organisations of all sizes.
“I think this is the beauty of the Leicester Innovation Festival. It’s really valuable to a broad church of people,” agrees Mat. “For example, in recent years there’s been themes on technological innovation, responsible productivity, and sustainable growth. They’ve all been highly relevant to anyone in a strategy, innovation, operations, business development type position. But I would say in particular to SMEs, in particular to entrepreneurs, to help them appreciate that there is so much opportunity and knowledge and resource and expertise out there to really help them grow their business, and to realise that their challenges are often shared. It really helps not just to learn from the events going on, but to really network with the different attendees as well.”
This year the University is hosting three events at the Festival: ‘The Money Map: Funding Journeys that Power Innovation’ and ‘Knowledge Transfer Partnership – Access to Subsided Innovation Workshop’ at Space Park Leicester, and ‘The Growth Forum: Shaping Tomorrow Through Innovation’ at Brookfield, home of the School of Business.
“Pretty much year on year the University has looked to host some kind of business innovation focused event at the Festival. We are trying to break down the walls, break down the barriers between all the great knowledge and research and things that we do in the university and getting that to the world in a way that they can then make use of it. The Innovation Festival is an opportunity for us to outreach, demonstrate, convert our research into something, in a forum that makes sense, and also involve businesses in that conversation.”
“I think one of the biggest challenges – and this is something that we are extremely keen on addressing as a School of Business – is that we often do really great research and it’s really important for us to take what we’ve done and translate it into different materials, playbooks, managerial applications, policy briefings, anything that will help businesses to grow better, to innovate better, to do better. The Growth Forum is a chance to share those insights while at the same time drawing on the rich experience of our speakers, panellists and attendees.”
As well as supporting the local business community, the University’s involvement with the Innovation Festival also creates opportunities for students.
“The Festival is free to attend and it’s absolutely open to anybody, so there’s no harm whatsoever for students to attend, especially those that are aspiring entrepreneurs. I would strongly recommend students who have aspirations towards entrepreneurship or even toying with the idea of starting a business to certainly get involved.”
So what are the key themes this year that everyone at the Festival going to be talking about in terms of business innovation? Mat offers these suggestions:
“I think a lot of the key themes will be concentrated around things to do with the modern industrial strategy, particularly economic growth. But I think also there will be a lot of discussion about the challenges for growth: the burdens on business, the tax burden on businesses, the growing disconnect between the desire for growth but not having an environment that is sufficiently driving it.”
“Fundamentally, I think a lot of this will come down to sustainable economic growth. And within that, you’ve got business growth, but how is that business growth sustainable for society? I also think that no doubt there will be a good focus on AI. I think that’s bound to come across at some point as well.”
For more details of individual events, visit the Leicestershire Innovation Festival website.