Adam Smith Business School

Academics, professional services colleagues, and students have recently taken part in two innovation workshops designed to boost entrepreneurship capacity across a consortium of European universities. The workshops formed part of the €1.2m EU funded ‘ACCELLERATE-EEE’ project which seeks to develop the conditions for entrepreneurship to flourish at the University of Glasgow and partner institutions.

The first workshop, held at the new Adam Smith Business School in April, focussed on ways that university staff can deliver a programme of activities to support entrepreneurs. Led by STAC.ac, Scotland’s leading technology accelerator, attendees from across the business school, College of Arts and Humanities, and College of Engineering, heard about best practice techniques for catalysing new start-up activity. Colleagues at Glasgow were delighted to welcome delegations from VU Amsterdam and Corvinus University, Budapest, who each enjoyed their time in Scotland spent learning about the local ecosystem.

In May, the ACCELERATE-EEE team travelled to Budapest with six entrepreneurial students from the University of Glasgow. The students took part in an advanced entrepreneurship workshop and had a chance to pitch their ideas to an international panel of experts. One of the participants, MBA student Paul McGillvery reflected “this was a fantastic learning experience, and I took a great deal of value from interacting with high quality student entrepreneurs from across Europe.”

The two-year project is drawing to a close this summer, and in that time a number of positive steps towards making the University of Glasgow a more entrepreneurial university have been advanced. Over 800 participants have taken part in the online Future Learn module ‘how to build a data-driven start-up.’ Additionally, more than 45 academic and professional services staff at the university have taken the opportunity to receive industry mentorship to boost their ability to support the entrepreneurship mission. 

The project team of Jillian Gordon, Nick Quinn, Dominic Chalmers, and Niall Mackenzie, all from the Adam Smith Business School, are now looking to the next phase of entrepreneurship support at the university. Principal investigator Dominic Chalmers said “the ACCELLERATE-EEE project has been a great mechanism for understanding the support landscape across the different colleges at the University of Glasgow. Building on the networks developed through the project, we are looking forward to building on the momentum that has been created to further enhance entrepreneurship and innovation at the university.”              

 

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First published: 3 June 2024