The Queen's Awards, established more than 40 years ago to promote British enterprise as a force for good in the world, are becoming ever more finely tuned to the changing needs of modern business.

Among Oxfordshire's crop of winners this year is the recipient of an award offered for the first time in the South East: the Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion. This has gone to Peter Westgarth, for 15 years the chief executive of the Cowley-based organisation Young Enterprise, which encourages school pupils set up their own companies, helped by advisors from local firms.

This makes the award a sort of family affair, since Mr Westgarth, who retired from Young Enterprise last year, is now chief executive of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme.

Mr Westgarth, 52, who has devoted his working life to helping young people develop their potential, said: "I started as a teacher and then found that I could draw young people out by teaching business principles.

"Now, at the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, I am still in the business of developing young people, though no longer in a way directly relating to business.

"But here we still reach people's latent skills and encourage them to stretch their personal best. And we encourage organisational and management skills."

Last year, about 280,000 young people around Britain took part in Young Enterprise initiatives, 1,500 of them in Oxfordshire. As for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, it is growing at five per cent a year with 250,000 people on the scheme right now.

During Mr Westgarth's time, there was a six-fold increase in the number of participants in Young Enterprise which is funded roughly 33 per cent each by Government, private sector, and the schools which take part. Now it is truly national, operating through 12 regional centres.

Other Oxfordshire winners of Queens Awards this year are the Henley Management College, and the fast expanding high-tech Oxford Diffraction, based at Milton Park, Abingdon.

Oxford Diffraction, which employs 44 people in Oxfordshire, 45 in Wroclaw, Poland, and another three in USA, was established at Milton Park in 2001 but already has a turnover of more than £4m, having increased exports in three years by more than 150 per cent.

The company makes X-ray diffraction equipment for studying the atomic and molecular structure of chemicals, drugs and proteins. The machines built in Poland are used in the fields of drug design, geology, physics, and chemistry. Achieving the export growth has involved extensive overseas travel and the appointment of many distributors.

Financial director Kevin Aubrey said: "Our selling point is that our machine is low maintenance as well as relatively service-free."

Oxford Diffraction Limited was spun out of Oxford Instruments in March 2001 in order to develop, manufacture and supply analytical instrumentation for X-ray crystallography.

The company emerged from a successful alliance between Oxford Instruments and a dynamic young company in Wroclaw, Poland, called Kuma Diffraction, which itself had spun out from the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1993. It is funded largely by venture capital trust money, with Oxford instruments still holding some shares.

Mr Aubrey added: "Obviously Oxfordshire was the ideal base for us, thanks to our connection with Oxford Instruments. Obviously its proximity to the universities is helpful though its proximity to Heathrow and Birmingham airports is less helpful to us than to some because many of our flights take off from Stansted."

By way of contrast to Oxford Diffraction, Henley Management College was established back in 1945. It has won its award for increasing its overseas earnings by nearly 50 per cent to £11m over six years, attracting students from more than 100 countries.

The college, employing 268 people, offers business courses and its own master's degree qualification which is delivered to a great extent over the Internet. It also undertakes research on business matters and publishes its findings.

The principal of the college, Christopher Bones, has developed a marketing strategy based on collaborative arrangements and local representatives in dozens of countries.

The Queen's Awards celebrated their 40th birthday last year. Government funded and organised by the Department of Trade and Industry, they were brought up to date by a 1999 committee chaired by Prince Charles.

The Queen gives a party for winners at Buckingham Palace at her own expense and award winners are often visited later by members of the Royal Family.