Business Minister starts a week of ‘work experience’

The Minister is also actively encouraging employees working on enterprise policy at Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to participate in the initiative over the next year to help boost their understanding of the real-life issues faced by smaller firms, and bring SMEs and Government closer together. "This will enable us to capture ideas where Government can remove barriers to enterprise and test policy assumptions with real businesses," he said. "DIY Kyoto is a great place to start my work experience. It is a thriving company producing a revolutionary product. I am really keen to roll up my sleeves and understand exactly how the business works, and what issues they may face in the future." DIY Kyoto designs and manufactures wattson, an energy meter which consumers use to monitor their electricity usage by the minute. The company was set up to encourage and assist people in considering the amount of energy they consume on an everyday basis. The founders now act as consultants and experts within the design, energy and environmental sectors, as well as developing additional features for wattson and continuing to grow their company. Richard Woods, co-founder and director of DIY Kyoto, said: "We are delighted to have Mark Prisk working with us for a day. We are about to launch a new investment round in order to fund a number of new products in the UK, so we will be talking to Mark about these opportunities, and other ways the Department for Business can help and serve small businesses such as ours. We have just launched the high capacity wattsonXL for businesses, so we have got plenty of calls for Mark to make as well!"