Scotland
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!
Regional events, what’s happening near you
Hi Friends, Scottish Institute for Enterprise have a number of in-house events and competitions that we run each year, such as The Student Enterprise Summit and the New Ventures competition. These are always really popular and well attended, and will always get their own updates!
However, in addition to these we’re also very lucky to have a terrific number of regional events this year. Enterprise interns at institutions all over Scotland have been hard at work creating events for their own areas. Events such as the upcoming Meet The Entrepreneur event in Edinburgh, with a visit to a local successful business, or the Pub Quiz organized in Glasgow last week! As Open University students can be found in every town and community in Scotland, having events that may be a bit nearer to home is a real boost, and there is no event that OU students should feel they are not included in. So this has been a fine start to the year, too much to do and too little time.
Keeping track of all these events will be a challenge, so thankfully the Regional Events page on SIE is listing as many of them as possible. We currently have listings for events in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Some of these are Non-SIE events that have been organized by University or entrepreneurship groups, and with Global Entrepreneurship Week coming this list will be pretty full indeed.
I’ve added these Regional Events to the links in this blog, keep checking back, and if something catches your eye then check it out!
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!
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>.</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)
Enterprise goes Everywhere 