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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, our visual strategy planning product 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

The Flux2010 final was an intense and fast-paced event run over 3 days.

On arrival each team was given a business challenge related to an existing company - Remploy - which specialises in finding employment opportunities for those who face complex barriers to work. The company already operates a number of business divisions and the challenge set each team was to a framework for a new business division of the company that would be able to generate significant income and profits over time. Specifically this new business had to meet a number of requirements:

• Have a good fit with the current values and branding of the organisation
• Have a good fit with the organisation's existing assets
• Either extend existing or create a new customer base for the company
• Have the capability of generating £10m of revenue within 5 years
• Be innovative and technologically challenging
• Have the potential to operate in other countries

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 presentation to the board of the company, as they were informed that it had decided it wanted to reduce the risk of the final project by developing it in partnership with another company. Each team had to come up with an appropriate partner and present a coherent case for their choice within 15 minutes.

The winning team was selected by popular vote and was duly crowned FLUX 2010 National champions, receiving a total of £3,000 in prize money.

Day three was dedicated to some employers, like Experian and Backup Direct, who had seen students in action on Days 1 and 2 or others which had decided that Flux 2010 was a great place to find and recruit new talent.

"FLUX has helped to identify some strong candidates we would like to discuss opportunities with."
David Wigley, Operations Director, Backup Direct

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