Christmas comes early for Sussex Businesses with Profitnet

The University of Brighton is sending out 1,500 miniature Christmas trees to invite Sussex companies to join its hugely successful peer support scheme, Profitnet. The programme was initially launched by the university two years ago in Hastings by sending out money trees but with just over a month until Christmas the miniature Christmas trees seemed more appropriate!

The university has been awarded £2 million by the Higher Education Funding Council to extend the initiative from Hastings to the rest of Sussex and is inviting companies to join. The results of the programme will help to drive national policy on how universities can support local small and medium sized enterprises.

The free programme uses the Learning Networks model to get businesses in the same sector, some of them initially competitors to work together to find solutions to common business problems.  Current members of Profitnet have seen substantial increases in profits thanks to the programme and the approach has proved so popular that nearly every company involved asked for it to be continued.