Entrepreneurial education

Scotland can be the most entrepreneurial society in the world. That’s the view of digital entrepreneur Chris Van der Kuyl and the Entrepreneurial Exchange networking body he chairs.

Speaking at a Universities Scotland event last night at the Scottish Parliament, Van der Kuyl told Scotland’s higher education institutions the vision was attainable if society and government embraced it.

“We live in a more competitive landscape, which no one has ever lived through. I believe we’re living in a time of the fastest change any of us have ever lived through, and it’ll be the slowest pace of change we’ll ever live through,” he said.

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Van der Kuyl was recently quoted as saying he predicted digital media would be “bigger than North Sea oil”, a point he underlined last night. But it wasn’t just about digital, he said. “The flood of intellectual capital we have in our universities, in the amazing businesses coming into Scotland, and I see it in life sciences, in medicine, in so many areas. We’re right at the beginning. Scotland is amazingly positioned, but if, and only if, we get our talent policy right.”

Universities can play an active role in encouraging students to start up their own businesses, according to a new action plan by Universities Scotland. All 19 HE institutions are committed to an entrepreneurial 'culture' said convener Pete Downes.

“We know in Scotland we do have fantastic research in our universities but we have at the moment relatively little or low levels of investment in R&D in our businesses, and that creates a potentially problematic situation in which the knowledge that universities create is utilised elsewhere.

“The best way to change that it to ensure our graduates into Scotland increase that R&D in the business sector more effectively in the future,” he said.

Education Secretary Angela Constance said the Scottish Government did want Scotland to be “an entrepreneurial nation”, and praised the contribution of universities to the innovation agenda.

“Investing in entrepreneurial education will mean Scotland will be fostering the next generation of Scottish entrepreneurs, and the Scottish Government is absolutely committed to working with Scottish universities to make this happen,” she said.

On the day Constance suggested she may amend plans to reform university governance, it was Van der Kuyl who raised the elephant in the room.

“As the government does a fantastic job of starting to look at how to prepare our universities for the 21^st century, to start to look at how we organise and govern those universities, the thing I would encourage them to look at specifically is to make sure you measure those entrepreneurial values and cultures in our universities, to give them a governance structure that allows them to take risks, be bold and take on the world.

“Because if we don’t we will be second division, third division rather than the most entrepreneurial society in the world,” he said.