YTKO gets national award for women's enterprise support

CAMBRIDGE, UK - Friday 9 February, 2007 - YTKO’s commitment to women’s enterprise has been recognised with a Prowess Flagship Award for Best Practice in Women's Enterprise Support.

The Award was presented at the annual Prowess Conference in Brighton this week.

Prowess says YTKO is the only commercial business awarded Flagship status across all public and private sector services, including the Norfolk Network and the Bioscience Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship (BYEF).

Head of Prowess, Erika Watson, says YTKO’s commitment to women in science, engineering and technology (SET) is particularly noteworthy:

“The achievements of the YTKO BYEF programme are quite simply exceptional. Our research has revealed a plethora of SET innovation programmes where the usual complaint is that there are no suitable women candidates. The design and approach of the YTKO programme has proven that this is just not the case.”

“As the Economist magazine has said, ‘forget China, India and the internet: economic growth is driven by women’. Nowhere is this more relevant than women in SET, where increasingly young women are academically out-performing their male counterparts. We commend the BYEF programme and the leadership YTKO have shown in this critical area of economic development and growth,” says Ms Watson.

The Flagship Award demonstrates YTKO’s growing commitment to projects benefiting communities, reflected in the company’s emerging 50/50 split between public and private sector work.

Community and personal development is at the core of new projects like the Enterprising Women programme, funded by the East of England Development Agency and European Social Fund, and administered on behalf of several women’s enterprise partners by YTKO.

“Enterprising Women is bringing together business support providers in the East of England and tailoring services to women, as well as providing a community and network to boost women’s confidence in building enterprises,” says YTKO CEO, Bev Hurley.

YTKO’s traditional expertise in promoting innovation in science and technology also has wider public benefits, Ms Hurley observes.

“Innovations in science and technology can have economic and community benefits, such as allowing flexible and remote working, which can make balancing commitments easier for employees, particularly women. Research demonstrates that flexible work practices also benefit employers and economies. We’re proud to promote innovation and the opportunities it presents,” she says.

YTKO’s success reflects this attitude. The company is expanding, increasing its workforce by a quarter in 2006 and signing several new European contracts, with similar growth forecast in 2007.

Editor’s notes:

· Photos of the award presentation and logos are available with this media release on the YTKO website: www.ytko.com

· The Prowess Flagship Award demonstrates that an organisation delivers quality services for women. It involves a rigorous assessment process including internal evaluation, a site visit by a Prowess consultant and client interviews. The internationally recognised Flagship Award is endorsed by the Department of Trade and Industry and several regional development agencies.

· The Economist article referred to by Ms Watson is from an article titled, ‘Women in the workforce: the importance of sex’, published April 12 2006.

· Prowess is the UK’s national network of organisations and individuals supporting the growth of women's business ownership

YTKO is a UK-based small to medium enterprise (SME) promoting and commercialising science and technology, with offices in Cambridge, Norwich and Leeds, as well as in France and Greece.

YTKO
St Johns Innovation Centre, Cambridge, UK, CB4 0WS
YTKO Communications Manager, Cobi Smith, +44 1223 421468 or cobi.smith@ytko.com.

This release was published on openPR.