Helping one woman to make it in hydraulics: Helen’s story Helen Tonks is just one of the thousands of SME leaders we have helped in the Centre for Enterprise and, like every other beneficiary, her story is important and unique. Helen is the vision and drive behind the growth of the multi award-winning Hydraulics Online Ltd brand. With CfE’s help, she has grown from a business start-up, with a blank sheet of paper, to become the Department for International Trade’s Northern Powerhouse Export Champion and the leader of a global company - serving customers across 20 sectors, in 130 countries around the world. Helen loves making things happen and making every day count, and thrives on collaboration, which sits at the heart of many of the CfE programmes. Amazingly, she juggles the work-life-learning balance with being a mum to seven children! Helen started her journey with Manchester Metropolitan University in 2017 on the SMART Cheshire Innovation Programme learning how to develop and launch new products and services for her specialist hydraulic design and supply company. Helen recalls that, “From the moment it began, my relationship with Manchester Metropolitan has flourished, creating a virtuous circle of learning, support and growth for all – the ripples of which continue to extend into the wider business community.” After graduating from this programme Helen joined the CfE business alumni community, benefitting from workshops, masterclasses and toolkits. As her business grew, she took up further support in 2020 by joining our Made Smarter programme, to develop her skills in technology/manufacturing leadership and then the Small Business Leadership Programme in 2021 to support her to survive and thrive beyond the pandemic. All of this has learning has been translated into practical benefits for her business – growth, job creation, innovation and internationalisation but also into recognition for Helen herself, culminating with her taking a place in the prestigious Northern Power Women “Powerlist” 2022. Perhaps the best bit is Helen is now inspiring and helping other small business leaders and has joined a CfE group of mentors to help the learning of the next generation of SMEs. We can’t put it better than she can: “Leading a business is all about curiosity and confidence. Manchester Metropolitan has helped me to grow both by the bucket-load, and to develop and hone skills that, together with my lived experience, I can now share with other SMEs.”

1, Small businesses often have perception barriers in working with universities – find the right ways to meet them on their own turf
2. Language is hugely important – translating research into impact starts with the words we use to connect to small business leaders
3. An interdisciplinary team is key – from academic colleagues through to compliance, from marketing through to technical teams, working with SMEs needs expertise in all areas

At university level the work of CfE forms part of our overall strategy and supports many of our future goals:

Cultivate an innovation-led culture. We will continue to foster entrepreneurship to support relationships, and ensure we are ready to embrace emerging possibilities. We will deliver agile curricula aligned to market demand.

Apply our research to effect positive change. We will work with partners to apply our research and knowledge exchange to deliver shared priorities, for example, reaching net zero, building digital technologies, and addressing societal inequality.

Focus on our research, knowledge exchange and education strengths in working with businesses and the region, capitalising on our expertise in industry sectors and our institutional-wide track record in working with SMEs, on Knowledge Exchange Partnerships and in Degree Apprenticeships.

Increase our regional economic and social impact, by utilising our significant scale and breadth of activities for positive change and be a thought leader across Manchester and the region.

Work closely with our alumni to benefit our business and external engagement, to help us deliver our education, graduate outcomes, and research and knowledge exchange.

As for the work of CfE itself, we have hundreds of thousands more SMEs to help in the world. We have a healthy pipeline of funding (£5M+) already secured and we will be pushing forward with innovation. For example, we are launching OPEN SME, where we lead a collaboration of four universities to develop a “learn-anytime” version of our SME support so that small business leaders whose work, family or caring commitments mean that they can’t attend sessions during usual working hours can learn at home, at night, at the weekend, on the bus etc. We are also planning to launch a Centre for Digital Innovation and to roll out our Foundry model to other areas of cutting
edge digital and tech.