Entrepreneurial Campus: report

1 Introduction: A call to action and Scotland's approach to developing our Entrepreneurial Campuses (ECs)

I. Why we need to act now

Following the publication and full adoption of the Scottish Tech Ecosystem Review (STER) in August 2020 and the publication of the National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET) in March 2022, there is a clear imperative to accelerate the development, and amplify the impact, of a number of world-class Entrepreneurial Campuses (ECs) across our network of institutions (colleges and universities) in order to deliver the vision set out in the above reports.

Institutions that are considered as world-class have had a significant impact on the regions that they inhabit, creating companies, jobs, and tax revenues. In addition, by retaining the expertise in an area, they are able to inspire and educate future generations of entrepreneurs. That is what we mean by a successful Entrepreneurial Campus.

Our colleges and universities provide a solid foundation that we can leverage to deliver this change. However, when comparing our approach and outcomes with global institutions we have identified several opportunities for improvement. By aligning our resources, enhancing our support for start-ups and academic spin-outs, and developing an entrepreneurial mindset across our students and staff populations, we will create businesses and social enterprises that will bring about the socio-economic impact we require.

In this paper, we set out a framework by which the Scottish Government, its agencies, Scottish colleges and universities and other institutions, organisations, groups and individuals with an interest can accelerate the development and amplify the impact of entrepreneurial campuses across Scotland's network of post-16 educational institutions (i.e., colleges and universities).

This paper presents the attributes displayed by successful ECs around the globe over the past 50+ years that will be critical for Scotland to embrace across our academic institutions if we are to develop a network of ECs over the next 10+ years.

In assembling this paper, we have adopted the same approach as the original STER report, using the guiding principles published in August 2020 and as such advocate a coming together and increased collaboration across the ecosystem to achieve the change needed.

By clearly stating our ambition (based on global best practice), adopting the necessary culture and behaviour changes, and re-aligning existing resources/investing in new resources and approaches, we will build on the current activities across our educational institutions in Scotland to achieve the required growth in impact. It will not be easy – many of the successful institutions around the globe have taken over 50 years to reach their current level of entrepreneurial activity and economic impact. Today, in Scotland, we don't have the luxury of the same timescales and therefore we need to act now and leverage all the learning we can to achieve our potential in a far shorter time period.

II. What do we mean by an "Entrepreneurial Campus"?

Across our tertiary education sector in Scotland, we have around 45 "post-16 institutions" (colleges and universities) dedicated to supporting the lifelong learning of Scottish residents. We have the opportunity to create the conditions across these institutions where entrepreneurial teaching and activity flourish and, in turn, drive economic development. We define an Entrepreneurial Campus as any institution that:

• Inspires the development of an entrepreneurial mindset in their students and staff and academics, promoting and teaching entrepreneurship (including social and impact-led entrepreneurship);
• Provides co-curricular opportunities for students and staff to learn and experience how to succeed as an entrepreneur, linking in with past and current practitioners;
• Provides a launchpad with wraparound support for student start-ups and spin-outs, facilitating access to funding;
• Nurtures cross-faculty learning, projects, and research, rooted in solving global challenges;
• Amplifies regional economic development;
• Develops skills for workers who will staff the start-ups and scale-ups; and
• Provides a pathway to our emerging national Techscaler network and beyond.

We recognise that many of our post-16 institutions are already providing some of these conditions; however, as a whole, we have the opportunity to increase our impact.

III. What we can learn from the experience of others?

In terms of increasing entrepreneurial activity across our institutions, we are starting from a variable baseline with different levels of activity occurring across the network.

As we look outside of Scotland at successful ECs around the globe, we see an opportunity to transform our economic outcomes by building a strong national entrepreneurial platform that leverages the existing teaching and research excellence of our post-16 campuses.

We believe that by learning from the well-documented experiences of successful international institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Aalto University, Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Stanford over the past 50 years, and applying the learning to our own environment, we will be able to accelerate the development of our own Entrepreneurial Campuses.

Students attend institutions like MIT not just to learn, but to found a business. In doing this, on graduating (or maybe not graduating!), they often remain in the local area and leverage the facilities and support infrastructure offered by their institution and feeding back into the community.

Our observation is that the institutions that we consider as world-class have had a significant impact on the regions that they inhabit, creating companies, jobs, and tax revenues. In addition, by maintaining the expertise in an area, we are able to inspire and educate future generations of entrepreneurs.

We can also learn from each other as individual institutions or groups of institutions working together. Collaboration, rather than competition, between institutions (e.g., between those that are already achieving success and those on a journey to success) is critical, especially with our aim of driving regional economic development as well as broader national economic development.

It is the role of the government to support and encourage the development of our ECs in terms of how funding is made available and targeted as well as how we measure the impact and success of any interventions. The foundation of successful entrepreneurial campuses is world-class research and teaching and the support we propose should be incremental to, and ring-fenced from, the continued funding aimed at the core teaching and research.

IV. Attributes that are vital for entrepreneurial success

The most successful entrepreneurial institutions globally demonstrate a number of the attributes listed in this paper. No institution displays every attribute; however, we see adoption of entrepreneurial initiatives across the many of those represented. We live in a time of exponential challenges (climate change, cost of living, war in Europe, etc) and being "good" is no longer enough. We need exponential solutions to the exponential challenges we face and to achieve this we need to significantly increase our investment in socio-economic impact-related innovation.

We have grouped the attributes that we see as vital for entrepreneurial success under the following themes:

1. Align With Regional Ecosystem - Align and interact with your regional ecosystem and external partners to accelerate

2. Inspire Through Impact - Inspire young people to engage in entrepreneurial thinking through social and impact-led activities

3. Lead From The Top - Establish institutional policies that support the development of an entrepreneurial mindset in students and staff

4. Transform Curriculum - All students undertake credit-bearing courses in support of entrepreneurial development as well as set, and optional, cross-faculty, practical entrepreneurial learning opportunities during their student journey

5. Enhance Extra-curricular Support - Provide a systematic approach to extra-curricular support for student start-ups

6. Engage External Expertise - Develop (and engage with) an active alumni network and your local entrepreneurial community

7. Enhance Spin-out Support - Develop support for academic/staff spin-outs

8. Align Funding - Provide access to funding for student-and staff-led enterprises

9. Develop A Talent Pipeline - Create a vibrant and developing pre-16 domestic talent pipeline as well as attracting entrepreneurial students from around the world

10. Deploy A Framework For Change - Establish a framework for change that incentivises our institutions and ensures quality outcomes.

We develop these themes in Section 3 below and suggest a number of recommendations that might lead to establishing these attributes across our institutions in Section 4.