Success in Challenging Times

Key Lessons for SMEs

When?

Wednesday 17 April 2013, 17.30 to 20.00

Where?

Management School Building

Open to:

Alumni, Public, Staff, Students

Speaker:

Key Lessons for SMEs

Admission price:

This event is free of charge

Admission information:

To register please email fbelevents@surrey.ac.uk

Timetable

17:30-18:00 - Registration and coffee

18:00-19:00        
• Introduction from Sir Michael Snyder, Senior Partner, Kingston Smith LLP                    
• Presentation on Research Study ‘Success in Challenging Times:  Key Lessons for UK SMEs’              
• Question and Answer Session                
• ‘Give Your Business Plan a Workout’ – making your business plan more attractive to investors using the Business Model Canvas  

19:00-20:00 - Networking and light refreshments

Sir Michael Snyder
Senior Partner, Kingston Smith LLP
As Senior Partner of Kingston Smith, Sir Michael is responsible for the management of the firm and he maintains a varied client commitment, including professional practices, offering business advice and aiding negotiations.  He trained and qualified with the firm, having joined in 1968. He became Senior Partner of Kingston Smith in 1990, having worked for 11 years prior to this as Managing Partner.
Considerably involved in public and voluntary work, Michael is Common Councilman for the City of London, in addition to being a member and former Chairman of the Policy and Resources Committee (the Leader), member of the Finance Committee and Chairman of two other City of London Corporation Committees. He also serves as Governor of the City of London School for Girls; Vice-Chairman of Governors of Brentwood School; Chairman of London Business Loans (Wholesale) Ltd; and Chairman of the Government’s Professional and Business Services Group which advises Ministers and senior civil servants on economic, business and regulatory issues affecting the largest industry sector in the UK.
He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Institute of Directors and the Royal Society of Arts; Chairman of the Association of Practising Accountants; Member of the Securities Institute; and a Member of Group A firms. He is also a past Master of the Worshipful Company of Needlemakers, and Master of the Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers, as well as a patron of Just Share.

Professor David Gray
Professor of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, Dept. of Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour, University of Greenwich
After graduating from the London School of Economics, David embarked on a 13 year teaching career as an economics lecturer before taking up a post in training and development at the London Stock Exchange where he was director of a major training development initiative for the UK securities industry.
In over 20 years at the University of Surrey, David led many professional development programmes, and taught on the School of Management’s ‘flagship’ programme, the MBA, for which he designed and taught the Action Consultancy module.  Through this, local organisations ranging from corporates, to small and medium enterprises and voluntary sector organisations identified key business challenges for which, under the guidance of the University, MBA teams conducted research and devised options and solutions for implementation. At Greenwich University, David is active in bidding for research projects, supervises doctoral and MSc students and teaches research methods.
David’s research interests, and publication record, include research methods, management learning (particularly coaching and mentoring), action learning, reflective learning, and e-learning.  He has written books on work-based learning, coaching and teacher education and published in prestigious journals such as Organization Studies, Management Learning, and the International Journal of Human Resource Management.  He has been a member of the International Coach Federation’s global research committee, and has recently edited a European handbook for mentors in vocational education.  David has led a significant number of coaching research programmes both for managers of SMEs, for unemployed managers who want new employment and more recently for unemployed managers who seek to start their own businesses.

He holds a BSc(Econ) – London School of Economics (1973), Postgraduate Certificate in Education – University of Manchester (1975), MA(Ed) – University of Leeds (1983), MSc – University of Surrey (1992) and PhD – University of Surrey (1995)

Professor Mark Saunders
Professor in Business Research Methods, University of Surrey
Mark joined the Surrey Business School in January 2009 as Professor in Business Research Methods.  His is also Director of Postgraduate Research Programmes. His research interests are Research Methods and Human Resource Aspects of the Management of Change and these are reflected in his teaching.   Mark also undertakes consultancy in the public, private and not for profit sectors.
Mark began his career in academia after a variety of research posts in local government. He lectured at the Gloucestershire Business School, University of Gloucestershire, in Research Methods and Human Resource Management between 1990 and 2001. During this period he was Head of the Human Resource Management Research Centre. He subsequently worked at Oxford Brookes University Business School between 2001 and 2009 where he was Assistant Dean (Director of Research and Doctoral Programmes) and Professor of Business Research Methods.

Mark is co-author of seven management text books. These include Research Methods for Business Students (2012), Doing Research in Business and Management: An Essential Guide to Planning Your Project (2012); Statistics: What you really need to know (2008); Strategic Human Resource Management (2007); Employee Relations: Understanding the Employment Relationship (2003) and Managing Change: an HR Strategy Approach (2000).
His co-edited books combine his research interests in methods and trust.  The most recent the Handbook of Research Methods on Trust (2012) provides a comprehensive collection of chapters on the methods currently used to research trust.   In contrast Organizational trust: a cultural perspective (2010) is drawn from an ESRC funded seminar series for which he was principal investigator.
Mark's recent consultancy clients include Kingston Smith LLP, Worcestershire County Council, Cambridge University, the National Health Service and West Midlands Learning and Skills Council.   He holds a BA (Lancaster), MSc (Salford), PGCE (Cantab), and PhD (Lancaster) and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Professor Alan Brown
Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Surrey
Prior to his Professorial role at Surrey Business School, Alan was a Distinguished Engineer at IBM Rational software. His most recent post was IBM Rational Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Europe, where he worked with customers across Europe consulting on software engineering strategy relating to enterprise solutions, process improvement, and the transition to agile practices.
In this role, Alan engaged in strategic discussions in areas such as enterprise solution delivery, software delivery economics, and distributed software and systems delivery. Alan has worked in many strategic roles in the software industry in Europe and the United States, including Vice President of Research and Development at Sterling Software, Research Manager at Texas Instruments Software, and as a senior technical staff member at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University.
Alan has published more than seventy papers, and authored and edited numerous books.  He holds a BSc in Computational Science from the University of Hull and a PhD in Computing Science from the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.