Founded in 1796 as ‘a place of useful learning’, entrepreneurship is in our DNA and like any (200-year-old) start-up, the University of Strathclyde, seizes opportunities, embraces change and continually strives for excellence.

Since the launch of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship in 2002, acknowledged as a leading university-based centre of entrepreneurship in Europe, we have continued to make significant enhancements to our entrepreneurship offer and service provision.

In-keeping with our institutional values – Bold, Ambitious, Innovative, Collaborative and People-oriented – in November 2020, mid pandemic, we took the next step on our own entrepreneurial journey and launched our institution-wide entrepreneurship strategy, Strathclyde Inspire, the first of its kind in Scotland.

Our vision is to create a world-leading entrepreneurial ecosystem which unlocks the entrepreneurial potential of our people and creates an environment in which venture creation and growth multiplies and thrives, and our mission is to be the partner of choice at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey.

Strathclyde Inspire delivers a step-change in our already impressive support for Strathclyders with start-up ideas or commercially viable research:

• The £50m landmark donation received through the philanthropic foundation of alumnus, entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr Charles Huang enabled the launch of the Stephen Young Entrepreneurship Awards programme which provides £300k funding each year to our emerging entrepreneurs via prizes, grants and investments
• We have made £7.5m available for investing in innovative and sustainable businesses
• We have very recently opened our new Entrepreneurship Hub offering touchdown, co-working and office space at the heart of the Glasgow City Innovation District, instantly connecting our entrepreneurs with a thriving innovation ecosystem of innovators, founders, researchers and investors
• We have launched an accessible IP & Commercialisation Policy which rewards academics for their entrepreneurship.

All of that said, at Strathclyde we believe that entrepreneurship is much more than starting a
business. It is a mindset, a way of behaving and could and should be embraced by all. To that end, we have developed a sector-leading approach for providing Entrepreneurship for All which is the cornerstone of the strategy.

We have worked with our student body to create the Entrepreneurial Strathclyder which captures the entrepreneurial characteristics we want to instil in our students and staff and we have set ourselves an ambitious goal of ensuring that every student has the opportunity to engage in an entrepreneurial learning opportunity – to develop these attributes – by 2025.

Through extensive engagement with Faculty we know that flexibility is going to be key to success and so we are developing a suite of options including an entrepreneurship MOOC, a 10-credit entrepreneurship module for use by all faculties, and a practical entrepreneurship skills programme. To ensure entrepreneurship becomes truly embedded in the student experience, we now have a formal partnership with our Students’ Union.

And of course, it’s not all about the students. For staff we are now offering entrepreneurial training as a core part of our staff development opportunities and entrepreneurship is embedded into our new staff induction.