Experiential Academy (XPA) is the winner of the SME Business Elite Award for Best Student‑Business Collaboration Platform.
This recognition reflects our work to foster meaningful collaborations between management students, graduates and small businesses. By translating real business challenges into structured, consulting-style projects, we create opportunities for students to apply their academic knowledge in a professional environment while enabling SMEs to access and deploy research-backed best management practices on their business challenges.
XPA addresses the growing challenges that management graduates and small businesses share: professional development in the current fluctuating economy. Students leverage their academic knowledge to build their practical and commercial skills, while small businesses leverage their professional value to access the best management practices.
Why We Think Our Platform Stands Out
1:1 Collaboration
Experiential learning is often delivered through group projects, while individual professional experience can be more difficult to access, particularly for students who lack established industry connections.
Both in-group and individual approaches have value. Academic-led group projects more often focus on learning and interpersonal skills, e.g. teamwork and internal communication. Business-led projects focus on individual capabilities, developing practical skills, such as project management and professional communication, and leveraging formal knowledge to deliver commercial outcomes.
XPA nurtures employability and commercial outcomes. Each project connects an individual student or graduate with a business, creating a direct professional collaboration in which their contribution, communication and recommendations can be assessed first-hand.
This distinction matters significantly in an increasingly competitive graduate job market. Academic qualifications provide graduates with frameworks to approach and solve problems; however, employers also need evidence of transferable skills and graduates’ passion for the vacancies they’re offering.
XPA’s 1:1 collaboration format, complemented by mentorship, allows learners to develop these practical skills and reliable evidence of commercial value.
Academically Meaningful Projects
We envisioned that academic resources, frameworks, and learning could be students’ edge to prove their individual competency and enter the current competitive graduate job market.
XPA translates SME challenges into structured, consulting-style projects that draw on students’ existing knowledge while encouraging them to develop their practical capabilities. Rather than requiring students to acquire an entirely new skill set before they can contribute, projects allow them to apply relevant academic learning to a real business context.
This creates a two-way value exchange. Businesses gain fresh perspectives and structured recommendations on challenges relevant to their objectives. Students gain experience of applying their knowledge, developing professional skills and producing tangible evidence of their capabilities.
The model also creates opportunities for universities to connect academic learning with industry engagement. Depending on the programme and the university’s requirements, projects can complement existing modules or be designed for integration into academic coursework.
Local and National Companies
We believe meaningful collaboration between education and business should start with communities around us. This is why we focus on facilitating these collaborations among students and UK SMEs, contributing to local and national business communities while creating opportunities for the next generation of professionals. This also extends to international business management topics, focusing on UK businesses with globalisation ambitions.
We also understand that nurturing students’ employability requires gaining UK-based professional experience, demonstrating their capabilities within the market they are targeting, and building relevant industry connections.
This platform is the one thing that gave me real-life experience and the valuable experience I’ve gained in this process is just amazing.
It was also beneficial in building my consultancy skills and learning how to communicate in a professional manner.
It became a meaningful addition to my CV. I was able to apply what I had learned in class to practical work and deepen my understanding of the role while working on the project. Most importantly, it was a meaningful experience as it provided an opportunity that is not easily accessible to students.
Was very excited to work with a company and apply the knowledge I had learnt, and that’s exactly what happened, the process was smooth well-managed and got the chance to use our knowledge to apply for a real world company.
Experiential Academy’s award recognises our approach to connecting education and business. We remain committed to creating more opportunities for management students and graduates to demonstrate their capabilities while enabling SMEs to benefit from meaningful collaboration. If you are a student, graduate, university or business interested in working with us, explore Experiential Academy.
Recognitions
Nurturing Employability
Other Award Nominations
