About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

Peer Mentoring Guide

This guide shares Nesta'’s experience and learning of peer mentoring with creative businesses during the Starter for 6 programme.

This guide shares Nesta'’s experience and learning of peer mentoring with creative businesses during the Starter for 6 programme. 

Key findings:

  • Set expectations at the start of the programme and keep a schedule of meetings.
  • Meetings should be structured and finish with a list of action points. Structured guides for discussions can help. 
  • Mentees must agree to respect the contacts and networks of their mentors.
  • Mentors should be trained to know their limits and to refer issues outside of their experience or knowledge to other agencies.
  • Flexibility is advisable, providing mentees with access to different mentors as their business develops.
  • Mentors should not be over-burdened by needy mentees or by having too many.

Peer mentoring was introduced to complement Nesta’s Starter for 6 initiative, an enterprise development programme for innovative creative start-up businesses.

 

Peer mentoring is different from traditional forms of mentoring (parent-child models) as it involves near peers with one or two years more experience than their mentees (akin to teenager-child model).

 

Nesta was keen to test the efficacy of this form of mentoring within a business context and considers the success of the peer mentoring pilot a valuable supplement to the Starter for 6 business development approach.

 

Author:

Nesta