Queen's Awards for Enterprise Promotion 2015 winners

Despite the popularity of TV shows such as Dragons' Den - in which people pitch business ideas to potential backers - entrepreneurship is "looked down on" in the UK, says Lopa Patel, one of the recipients of the Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion.

She believes that running your own business is liberating. "Entrepreneurship is a means of empowerment, particularly for women," she says. "You are not answerable to anybody."

Ms Patel volunteers for a number of bodies that promote entrepreneurship. She regularly speaks to young people and is an ambassador for the Women of the Future programme.

Her own "lightbulb moment" came in 1991. She joined ICI as a graduate trainee and took a look at its supplier of brochures and sales material. "I thought I could run it better, so I bought it," she says. She was right. She took over a printing business and converted it to a data company, DMS Direct, outsourcing the printing operation.

Ms Patel's parents, from Kenya, were among the Asian immigrants to the UK who were chased out of Africa in the 1970s. They set up a corner shop and Ms Patel believes the community had an "entrepreneurial gene" that is too often dormant in younger generations. Her parents had to fend for themselves and, as public services are cut, more people will have to do likewise, she says.

The enterprise promotion awards feature winners from across the UK. From Scotland there are Margaret Gibson and Nelson Gray. Ms Gibson established a vegetarian food company in 1985, joined the Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust in 1990 and rose to become deputy chief executive. In 2013, she joined Women's Enterprise Scotland as chief executive and is involved in Entrepreneurial Spark, a new business incubator in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Mr Gray is a prolific business angel who invests in many young companies and mentors entrepreneurs.

In England, Richard Holt is the manager of art and design at Somerset College. In June 2012, he opened the Creative Innovation Centre in Taunton to help creative people make a living from their work. This non-profit offers community access and enterprise training, and supports more than 130 artists, 45 designers and 95 musicians.

Chris Pichon is chairman of Wenta, the Hertfordshire-based enterprise agency, which he ran for 18 years as chief executive. In 2014 alone it assisted more than 1,200 start-ups in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire and provided business training to more than 4,500 people.

Andy Penaluna is professor of creative entrepreneurship at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. He helped create the UK's first formally validated teacher training course in enterprise education in 2011. He also worked with an all-party group of MPs on a report outlining how students could be more enterprising.

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