Enterprise
David Grayson CBE,
Principal: The BLU
Co-founder / director: Project North East

David Grayson has been involved in the small business field for more than twenty-five years.

He was co-founder/director of Project North East with David Irwin; which has pioneered a series of innovative approaches to youth enterprise and small business development. PNE has now done enterprise development work in more than 40 countries around the world. PNE now runs Shell LiveWIRE in the UK and is supporting the programme's development internationally.

He was a founder and co-chair of the Education for Enterprise Network in 1982. He was first joint Managing-Director of the Prince's Youth Business Trust in 1986-87, and subsequently led Business in the Community's work when it was the national umbrella for more than 300 local enterprise agencies in the late 1980's.

He was a member of the original "President's Steering Group" established by Michael Heseltine in 1992 to establish the Business Link network. He was the Chairman of the Business Links Accreditation Advisory Board throughout the life of the Board from 1996-2000; and was the first Chairman of the Business Link Network Company. He also chaired the original Government taskforce: The National Assessment Panel, which set up the national network of Business Links. He led a team which proposed the creation of a corporate university for the Small Business Service and Business Links in 2000 - the BLU. He is now the Principal of the BLU - which is the world's first, virtual corporate university for small business development professionals. He is chairman of the National Judging Panel for the British Government's Enterprising Britain Competition.

He chaired the European Small Business Conferences in 1993 and 1995; and was a rapporteur for the 1998 Enterprising Europe Conference organised as part of the British Presidency of the European Union. He has worked with the (then) ODA and other organisations like the OECD on small business development in more than twenty countries. He chaired an Anglo-Hungarian Enterprise Forum in 1990 shortly after the collapse of Communism. He has advised small business support organisations in Africa, the Middle East, South and North America, and continental Europe. Other involvement with help for small businesses includes being Chairman of the external advisory group for the Durham University Business School Small Business Foresight Programme (1995-2000); Member of the Microsoft Small Business Taskforce (1996-2000); and he was the director of the Prince of Wales Award for Innovation on BBC television for almost a decade.

He was the first German Marshall Fund Employment Fellow to the USA in 1985.