Welcome to the Edinburgh Enterprise Scene

On behalf of Global Entrepreneurship Week, this post briefly introduces readers to the enterprise scene in Edinburgh Scotland.

Here in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh there has never been a better time for new enterprises to take hold. As Scotland continues to increase its start-up potential, Edinburgh is one of the leaders in a new wave of development. Entrepreneurs at every age and in every field will find themselves welcome here to collaborate and create.

A major education hub, Edinburgh’s Universities and Colleges attract top talent from all over the world, and at these institutes enterprise is thriving. From The University of Edinburgh and its Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, to Heriot Watt and Napier Universities, entrepreneurship is on the rise among students. Known for their work in science and technology, these institutes contribute a vibrant energy to the local scene.

Bolstered by strong ties to education, the Edinburgh bioquarter hosts one of the highest rates of new biotech start-ups in the UK. Just one example is University of Edinburgh student Michael Yiin Shih Jie who this year won £50,000 and a year of business support in the Young Innovators Challenge run by Scottish Institute for Enterprise (SIE) for his work in microbes and corrosion. Also in this sector recent start-up UWI Technology received Venture Funding in 2012, and has developed label technology measuring risk of material degradation, with applications from refrigerators to aerospace.

The city is also renowned for its festival season, bringing in millions of visitors annually. Edinburgh local Rosalind Romer is also a former SIE competition winner, having been awarded the top prize in The New Ventures Arts & Cultural category in 2013. Rosalind has developed her idea, Punchline Comedy, into a successful event featuring the rising stars of comedy.

I asked Michelle Rodgers, Director of the Crowdfunding Centre and former Bloom VC CCO her view: “Anywhere with active Universities and active entrepreneurial support has huge potential. Edinburgh in particular is a tech hub with a great number of start-ups coming out.”

New start-ups will find the city boasts a positive support network. Organisations such as SIE, Entrepreneurial Spark and E-Club encourage the right environment for growth, and with new incubators and workspaces such as The Melting Pot, Creative Exchange Leith and Edinburgh Hacklab available, the scene is more active than ever.

As enthusiasm, investment and new ideas continue to grow, Edinburgh entrepreneurs have the potential to add tremendous value to the world.

The New Ventures Competition has launched!

What is it?

It is a tough and challenging competition for students and recent graduates at Scottish Colleges or Universities.

This competition is for people who are beyond the idea stage and are ready to go with their business or social enterprise.

New Ventures is also for people who have already launched their new business!

If you’ve made the decision to pursue your business idea, sleeves rolled up or already en route, New Ventures is fuel for your engine.

What kind of fuel? Oh, just a grand prize of £10,000! That kind of fuel! And yes, there are 2nd and 3d place prizes of £5,000 and £1,000 too.

The Facts:

Deadline for entry: 24 January 2014

Successful entrants will attend StartUp Day: 8 February 2014

Prizes: £10,000, £5,000 and £1,000

Apply by visiting: www.sie.ac.uk/about-sie/sie-activities/new-ventures.aspx and downloading the entry form

It is for YOU and your well-developed business plan and we are open for entries now!

Please take a look at the full eligibility information & guidelines here

Previous winners have gone on to secure further funding (including from Dragons Den) and have continued to run their businesses after graduation. Like Amy Jack (pictured below), our overall winner from last year!

SIE CEO Fiona Godsman and the last New Ventures competition overall winner, Amy Jack. Receiving her big cheque!

 

Good Luck, and get your motor running!

Fresh Ideas competition 2013-2014 is Open!

Hi Friends, here at Scottish Institute for Enterprise our popular New Ideas competition has returned for 2013-2014 as Fresh Ideas and is GO for launch!

Fresh Ideas is perfect for you IF:

• If you don’t know know a lot about business (Newbies welcome!)
• If your idea is early–stage
• If  you are studying in Scotland or recently graduated
• If you want to increase your business know-how and gain useful skills
• If you want to win £100 (regional) or £500 (national) or both!

Aye that’s right, you know I’m talking about you 😉 

Fresh ideas is run first by each Scottish Institution with local prizes, with finalists proceeding to the national competition. Finalists will have the opportunity to attend our Start-Up Day in February, a day dedicated to helping you develop your idea, enhancing your skills and build new relationships.

Visit SIE at http://www.sie.ac.uk/about-sie/sie-activities/fresh-ideas.aspx for full competition info and application details.

Our new online application system will allow you to save your progress as you go.  That means you can: Get an idea jolt (The good kind). Take some time to ponder (possibly in a chair while stroking your chin?). Come back to your application. Progress! Repeat until complete.  Deadline for Entry: November 29th 2013.

Have Questions? Get in Touch! 

You can always find me on twitter at @SIE_OU and on Facebook at our SIE Open University Scotland Group where you’ll find info on regional and social events, competitions and whatever fun things the internet brings me.

Best of luck x

SIE – Where are we now?

Hi Friends, The Scottish Institute for Enterprise is back for the new academic year! This is what has been going on…

The Young Innovators Challenge (YIC 2013) wrapped up

Winners of The YIC 2013: David Townsend, Victoria Hamilton, Michael Yiin Shih Jie, and Blair Bowman. Winner Laura Jayne Nevin was unable to attend.

Five young entrepreneurs were awarded £50,000 each, plus one year of business support for their ideas. From the press release: “Blair Bowman (Aberdeen University), David Townsend (St Andrews University), Laura Jayne Nevin (Edinburgh College of Art), Michael Yiin Shih Jie (Edinburgh University) and Victoria Hamilton (Strathclyde University) impressed the judges with their business plans during a tense process to claim the £50,000 and one year of dedicated business support to turn their ideas into reality.”

Here are some of the highlights from the competition!

And the winners made the papers

So then all of us at Scottish Institute for Enterprise got together… And said hello to some new faces!

I’m on the left, easily identifiable by my jumping at the wrong time!

These are my fellow interns, they are students at different Colleges and Universities across Scotland. There they will be communicating and interacting with their fellow students to promote enterprise and entrepreneurship!

What is coming up?

SIE competitions including Fresh Ideas  and New Ventures

New Ventures has a top prize of £10,000 and is for students with an existing business idea that is ready to go!

Fresh Ideas will award five winners £500 each and is designed to help you learn how to develop an idea!

Regional events and competitions just for you

Well, as an Open University student study is decentralised, a fancy way to say we work remotely and aren’t campus based. We have classes that begin in both October and February, so some students (like me) have had classes throughout the summer and are just about to sit an exam ( …yay). This has the benefit of making education accessible regardless of where you are in Scotland, but it also means we don’t get to say hello face to face so often. With students all over Scotland it would be nice to have some fun activities near home, right?

So with that in mind, this year we’ll have much more regional activities and events that Open University students can take part in!

I’ll be promoting those for you here, on our Facebook group and on twitter at @SIE_OU

And of course we’ll also be running competitions with fun prizes you can win!

Keeping in touch is easy

You can visit The Scottish Institute for Enterprise at www.sie.ac.uk any time for all the information you can handle

Join our Facebook group for Open University students  where I’ll be posting regularly with news, stories, ideas and updates

Follow me on twitter at @SIE_OU

And please check back here on Enterprise Everywhere where I’ll be posting events and competitions as well as Enterprise news from home and abroad!

Study Smart Part I : How do you work?

Hi Friends, For those of us studying at The Open University, exam season can be a particularly hard knock. The OU allows people who might not have studied for a long time to learn new subjects and develop new skills from wherever you are, and regardless of your background. A few students I’ve chatted to hadn’t studied since GCSE’s or A-levels, and for some it had been years or decades since their last day of doom exams.

Thankfully, most courses early-on are exam free, but if you stick with it long enough eventually you reach a day of reckoning. When you then find an exam on your calendar, hurtling ever closer, it is nerve-wracking. I don’t need to go into the stress exams can cause. I have recent previous study and have done exams within the last few years, but even with that to back me up I still found taking my first exam in a new subject difficult. It is OK to be nervous!

There’s obviously lots to help with the nerves, but one thing that is almost certain to help is:

Feeling confident in your knowledge of the material

If I know a topic backwards forwards and inside out and upside down, then I go in knowing that at least the ground beneath me is solid, even if my stomach is not. And if it doesn’t help? Well it certainly won’t hurt!

How do you get this mythical “confidence in your knowledge”? Well I came across an article from ideas.time.com awhile ago about techniques “Highlighting is a waste of time” and it got me thinking about that. Do we do things because they work or because they are just habitual?

• What I found: All my usual tactics (Highlighting and underlining until the pages are illegible) were counted in the WORST column. No gold star there.

• However: The two techniques listed as proven BEST were two I have been using to learn another language, and I just hadn’t considered that the same could be applied to exams.

Spaced Repetition and Practice Testing

So what does spaced repetition and practice testing mean? The author of the Time article suggests the use of a flashcard app, and that is absolutely correct. I’ve been using a great free tool for almost a year now which works wonders, and it’s called:

Anki.

Anki is a free, easy to use flashcard program that is available for *every* platform. Anki allows you to create your own memory cards, share decks you create, and search for shared decks. It uses an algorithm to space repetition of your cards, meaning you learn each piece of information at intervals to ensure you actually LEARN it.

There will be a Part II to this post coming very soon! It will cover how you can start using an efficient and effective way to revise for your exams. We’ll talk about how you can start using spaced repetition and practice testing quickly and simply, and how to incorporate it when you plan your exam-attack. No study skill that is too complicated or involved is going to help, so we’ll keep it simple! See you then 🙂

60-second interview with Mahala Le May

Picture from Mahala’s site of the sugar skull workshop

Hi Friends,

The Young Innovators Challenge deadline for entries is NOON on May 31st, which is currently… 60 hours from this very minute (Thank you Siri). As The YIC has a Food & Drink category, here is a sweet interview with Mahala Le May to keep your Idea-Machines running!

Mahala is a designer based here in Scotland who creates beautiful and delicious eating experiences.  She was kind enough to share her joy and passion with me, and so I am happy to share it with you too.

I met her at The Mini Makers Faire in Edinburgh last month where she was hosting an excellent workshop decorating Mexican Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls! Check out this video of the skulls made that day, they were excellent.

 

• Your site mentions you create eating experiences – What was your inspiration?

I’m really interested in how food brings people together, how everyone is effected by it and that everyone has a relationship with eating. And I love food.

 

• Of your creations and events to date, do you have a favorite?

Create: Eat was an incredible event to be involved with, 25 collaborators – from chefs to lighting designers and mixologist all worked together to put on a only night only dining extravaganza. It was brilliant to meet and work with so many talented people. The piece I made for it ‘canopy of canapés’ turned out exactly how I hoped, it was wonderful to see peoples’ reactions too it.

 

• Did you get any business advice/assistance from anyone/any group that helped you?

I’ve had business and financial support from Starter For 6 – a programme that helps innovative businesses and from PSYBT, I found business mentors particularly helpful . Also Cultural Enterprise Scotland – who run S46 – arrange lots of courses, advice sessions and had a website packed full of endless help-sheets and resources.

 

• Do you feel you’ve had errors or failures that you’ve learned from?

Yes of course, it’s part of the process, you almost learn more from what doesn’t work and even though it’s disappointing at the time, experiences -good and bad-  allow you to develop and strengthen as a business.

•  What gave you the idea to create Mexican sugar skulls?

I originally made the some sugar skulls to decorate a friend’s cake at their Mexican themed wedding. It been really successful as a workshop with both adults and children. I’d like to do an adults only mexican night with tequila, I’d love to see how the skulls would turn out. I want to make my events hands-on and accessible to encourage as many people as possible to get involved and have fun.

 

• How is the Food and drink industry in Scotland doing in your opinion? A good area to be involved or could it use some shaking up?

There’s a lot about the food industry in general that needs to change, but people are becoming more aware of these issues. In Scotland there are lots of amazing producers and people doing exciting things with food, there’s going to be lots to look forward too as long as everyone keeps communicating.

 

• Do you have a future dream project you would love to create?

I’ve got lots of ideas and a few projects coming up so I don’t want to give too much away.

•  A piece of advice you’d give to a budding edible entrepreneur?

Get out and speak to people, get them tasting and trying out what you make, the best way to know what works and it will give you confidence to grow your business and build up a network of fans – word of mouth is key to your food reputation. Good luck.

 

Mahala has worked on a variety of projects in the UK and in the Netherlands with Edinburgh University, Jelly and Gin and the Makers Faire among others. She combines a sense of delight with the visual and tactile pleasures of food to produce events, workshops and tastes with a joyful flair. Her creations look gorgeous and extremely tasty!! Eating is such a pleasure, it was delightful to meet someone who has as much fun with it as possible.

I will be very keen to attend the adult mexican-night. My attempts at making sugar skulls at The Makers Faire were trounced by the amazing skills of the children sat next to me – my skulls were somewhat geometric and spartan by comparison to the creativity on display! A second round (And perhaps a little tequila-based courage) and a chance to gobble some treats would suit me fine!

Thanks again, Mahala!

 

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/58667046″>Sugar Sugar boogie woogie</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user15810950″>Mahala Le May</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

*Videos and picture taken from http://www.mahalalemay.co.uk

Scottish Food and Drink Industry exports

Hi friends,

As we’ve got The Young Innovators Challenge on over at Scottish Institute for Enterprise, I thought you could use some interesting facts to keep your idea-machines going! The YIC has a food and drink category – And as something of a “foodie” (the only polite way I can think of to say that a dozen Krispy Kremes never make it home in my car), I’ve been really excited learning about this, the most delicious of all industries.

So what does the food & drink industry in Scotland sell, and to whom? Well, I started typing out a bunch of facts and figure here, but it wasn’t too exciting! So I’ve made a wee little infographic of the figures instead. As you might expect, our major drink export is whiskey, and our major food export is salmon! Enjoy!

*Note: I’ve spotted an error – The value of food and drink exports to The USA is 817 million or 0.817 billion, NOT 8.17 billion! The figure is correct and the text is not, an extra zero makes a big difference!

Bootcamp 13

 

 

 

Hi Friends, This might not be true for you yet (I don’t know where you are?) but in my neck of the woods the sun is shining! It is as though the world has been catapulted from Winter directly into the pleasant midge-filled days of Spring, and I for one am THRILLED.

As soon as the day turns bright everyone is out, suddenly busy, active, outdoors and sloughing off the torpor of January and February – Reinvigorating isn’t it?

That’s why Bootcamp is so ideally placed in the month of June – When spirits are high! Oh, what is Bootcamp?  Good question 🙂

Bootcamp is The Scottish Institute for Enterprise annual residential experience. It is not just a weekend away from home, it is a turbo-charged programme of challenging events and activities all designed to develop your business idea.

Bootcamp gives you the opportunity to learn about market research, funding and pitching among other topics, all while building your network. Assisted by business advisers and speakers, you’ll develop your idea in a like-minded and high spirited environment, and leave with a strong foundation in place.

Here’s a video of one attendee from Bootcamp 2012 talking about his experience!

Okay enough of the spiel,  give us the details already!

The facts:

• Date and Location: Bootcamp 2013 is being held June 26 – June 28th at The University of Stirling

• Who is it for: People who have an idea they want to develop

• Food and Accomodation: Accomodation, food, drink and snacks are provided for the duration (three-days).

• Any fees? There is a £30 fee to help cover the cost of the weekend. Payable when your position is confirmed and accepted. In some circumstances, students may be able to receive a bursary to cover this

• Deadline to apply: The deadline is MAY 20th

• Apply online via: http://www.sie.ac.uk/about-sie/sie-activities/bootcamp.aspx

• For more information: Bootcamp 13 flyer

 

Enjoy the rest of your day 🙂

 

Your Upgraded Lunch – Competition Winner!

I said I’d create a wordcloud of the responses I received, and boy did you deliver – You all had such terrific responses.

Here is what we learned:

Everyone loves cheese, mayonnaise, salad and bread. A lot of you like chocolate, bacon, butter and champagne. Steak, chicken and honey mustard are also big winners. That is great taste in lunch right there.

We received entries via comments on the post, by email and also from twitter, and after sticking them all into a proverbial hat (AKA random number generator) the winner was…  Foz!

Congratulations Foz, you’ll receive a Black & Blum Box and Bag and a gift voucher from Real Foods to enjoy your cheesy pasta bake with!

Thank you very much for participating, you’re all so great 🙂

*(Wordcloud generated via www.JasonDavies.com/wordcloud)

Food & Drink Brands – SIE in Mexico

Hi Friends, here is the second to last post I’ll do about Mexico. Food and Drink style!

The SIE Young Innovators Challenge has a Food and Drink category. So what better time to talk about that which is best in all the world – Food glorious glorious food!

Where we are lends shape to our tastes and fuels the demand for the businesses we start. This is the same all over the world.

SO it’s easy to forget that entrepreneurship doesn’t *have* to be local or use local products – unless we want it to! We are not bound to the market on our doorstep, nor are we bound to produce or enjoy only that which is found on our own turf. IF we were then there would be FAR fewer coffee shops and chocolatiers indeed!

As corny as it sounds, the world is full of open doors, and the potential to go through one remains, who knows what the tastes on the other side will be. Corny like a Midwestern maize field, I know I am 🙂

BUT when it comes to food and drink this is especially true. In what other category are our tastes and interests so wide or so exploratory?

Here’s a few brands I spotted in Mexico that we don’t see as much in Scotland – Your food & drink idea might fly off the shelves there?

King Henry’s – Makers of trail mixes, confections and nuts. These are individual plastic spoons each with a scoop of tamarind paste. In Mexico you can tamarind as raw fruit, in dried salted snacks, in soda and in ice cream.

 

OK Bubba Gump is not Mexican, but it’s still something you don’t find in Scotland! A chain of seafood restaurants drawing its name from the movie Forrest Gump, with locations in Mexico, USA, Japan and Malaysia, among others. This one was in the departures area at Cancun Intl.

 

You’ll find Jose Cuervo in Scotland, but you might not find this special edition Frida Kahlo “The Broken Column” package. The painting was a self-portrait of the artist symbolizing the lifelong pain she suffered following an accident in her youth. Not the most cheerful advertisement, but certainly eye catching!

 

Charricos Banana Flakes. Not so much a flat dehydrated chip like we might find in Holland & Barrett, and more like a crisp! These were good:)

 

El Yucateco – XXXtra hot Chile Habanero. These can be bought in a pack with three other types of El Yucateco sauces. On the Scoville Heat Scale for hot sauces, this one gets a score of 11,600. For comparison, Sriracha hot sauce is rated as around 1000-2500. Don’t let it touch the sides.

 

Ron Zacapa – This limited release is an award winning rum from Guatemala and is marketed and distributed by Diageo (As many brands in Scotland are). Though Zacapa is not very widely found in the UK compared to Diageo’s others such as Captain Morgan.

 

Silver Patrón – Made by Patrón of Mexico using the piña (The heart) of the blue agave plant (Also the source of Agave nectar). You can find this one in Scotland in some select markets.