Treasury minister leads joint US-UK entrepreneurial visit to Teesside

A Government Minister is leading a joint US-UK delegation to Teesside on Thursday (6 July, 2000) to see how the area is harnessing graduate-power to help economic regeneration following the decline of much of the region's heavy industry.

The visit by American entrepreneurs, led by Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Timms, MP, follows a top-level conference in London 'Enterprise and Technology for All: Seizing the Opportunity' held on Wednesday (tonight) being attended by over 100 US business chiefs. The Teesside visit is one of several to the regions after the London conference and will include seeing regeneration schemes in South Bank and Thornaby.

At the University of Teesside in Middlesbrough, the guests will see how the state-of-the-art Virtual Reality Centre is working with South Bank residents on regeneration ideas and meet graduate entrepreneurs who are setting-up high-tech campus-based new enterprises.

The US delegation includes Mr Thomas Alexander, Chief Executive Officer with optical networking specialist's LuxN; Mr Joe Markee, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer with Copper Mountain Networks; Mr Jeffrey V Patterson, Managing Director of Trust Company of the West; and Dr Oliver Sharp, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of ITurf Inc. The party will be accompanied by Mr Tony Dell, Director of GO-NE. They will be welcomed to the University by Helen Pickering, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and Professor Brian Hobbs, Director of R & D, and Graduate Enterprise Manger, Maurice Tinkler and Janice Webster, VR Director at the University of Teesside, (at 11am in the Learning Resource Centre, Southfield Road).

Helen Pickering said: "We are delighted to welcome this high powered group of American financiers and innovators and the Minister who are exploring the potential of new initiatives to help the regeneration and the role universities can play in this process. I will be outlining the success of our graduate business incubator centre, which has spun-off 11 new trading companies involving 24 graduates since being launched a year ago. Representatives from some of the new enterprises clustered around the Information and Communication Technologies will meet the Americans and discuss the potential for developing this exciting initiative further."

Mr Tinkler added that the business incubator scheme had exceeded expectations and had out-grown the original space set-aside in the Innovation and Virtual Reality Centre. "Teesside is experiencing major economic change and initiatives like our graduate enterprise scheme are encouraging graduates to stay in the region and establish new businesses in new areas such as web-design and graphic design. We need to do everything we can to foster this spirit of enterprise and believe we can successfully launch 20 new high-tech graduate companies every year. The University grants the graduates a free licence and provides fully equipped accommodation for the first year of the new undertaking to help get the businesses off the ground. We can also provide technical and business advice - even market research where this is required"

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