Entrepreneurial Campus: summary

Implementation

Change at this scale is complex and difficult to achieve. Each institution begins from a different baseline in terms of capability, ambition and culture. That said, it will be possible to implement and accelerate the change required if we leverage central/national assets (e.g. funding and national policy) in order to ensure commonality in approach across institutions.

For this reason, when considering the list of actions set out at the end of this document, it may be easiest to think about the actions under Theme 10 (Framework for Change) as being actions which need to be delivered sooner (or even first) in order to create a structure that will be capable of successfully delivering the actions in the other 9 themes.

For example, Action #54 in the list recommends that institutions should gauge their level of entrepreneurial maturity by assessing the extent to which they possess the attributes of a successful entrepreneurial campuses and indexing their maturity in line with one of three levels – Bronze, Silver and Gold.

If we index institutions' different levels of entrepreneurial maturity, we would have more and better data on their capabilities and the outcomes they are able to achieve.

This would give us a baseline from which to evaluate progress and change over time, clearly establishing where we are and where we need to get to. This is not about comparing between institutions but rather tracking progress of individual institutions.

Having established this baseline, Action #55 recommends that the Scottish Government, in partnership with other stakeholders should prepare and publish a framework for the change required to move us from where we are, to where we want to be.

This framework should require key stakeholders to 'self-identify' and make a clear commitment to support/accelerate change.

The key stakeholders in each institution can be categorised as follows:

• Sponsor – The individual or group who can authorise the change without seeking approval;
• Target – The individuals or groups who must change (note: all sponsors, agents & advocates are also, initially, targets);
• Advocate – The individual or group who propose/support the change seeking authorisation from a sponsor; and
• Agent – The individual or group responsible for developing & carrying out the implementation plans.
• It will be the responsibility of these key stakeholders to ensure that change is:
• Understood – i.e. diagnosed correctly
• Designed – i.e. the solution developed is fit for purpose
• Implemented – i.e. effectively and successfully deployed
• Evaluated – i.e. measured in terms of achieving the goal it set out to achieve

It will also be the responsibility of these stakeholders to ensure that change is supported by a robust and comprehensive communications plan that addresses the concerns and potential resistance to the change, and Key Performance Indicators ('KPIs'), that can be used to monitor the direction of travel of the change itself and also provide an indicator of the impact of delivering a successful entrepreneurial campus.

KPIs should also be linked to the funding of the interventions themselves to ensure that we continue to fund activities that achieve the impact that they are intended to achieve.

It is the case that universities already have a set of KPIs that are currently used to measure their success. So, specifically in relation to universities, our proposal is that a new 'North Star' KPI should be developed which directly supports our ambition to bring the entrepreneurial campus to life.

This 'North Star' measure might be something like:

• The number of start-ups/spin-outs reaching scale up status (i.e. companies that have found product market fit, have grown their turnover by at least 20% per year for 3 years and have over 10+ employees)

Further measures should also be considered and should also be aligned with the metrics being adopted by Scotland's national Techscaler network.

To support the measurement of progress at an overall, national-level, the final Action #58 recommends the establishment of an umbrella function to enable collaboration, track available assets, ensure good-practice sharing and comparable standardisation in data collection/performance benchmarking.

This umbrella organisation would establish the final hierarchy of KPIs that will be required to measure success. This umbrella role may be able to be absorbed by one of the existing Innovation Centres,^[5] which are currently funded by the Scottish Government.

The above approach will bring sustainable change and delivery however, it does not preclude individual (or groups of) institutions from progressing with implementing the actions listed.