Nurturing entrepreneurial mindsets

What does this really mean and how does it affect our people?

Being an enterprise university means that we don’t just focus on learning and ideas – we are committed to turning those ideas into workable solutions and having a positive impact environmentally, socially and economically. That means that we work in quite a different way to more traditional academia, building connections and collaborations that cross disciplines and break down boundaries.

This approach is needed now, more than ever. Scotland’s Chief Entrepreneur, Mark Logan, said ‘Modern Scotland has no choice but to look forward and get on with things’ but the way forward for Scotland’s farmers and crofters and those industries dependent on natural capital, is still not clear.

Farmers and crofters that contributed to NFU Scotland’s 2023 Intentions Survey identified growing uncertainty over Scottish Government’s future agricultural policy as the greatest threat to their business. Evidence of nature-positive, net zero principles and practices, and the acceleration of innovation for the benefit of those communities, is a growing imperative.

Building An Enterprise Culture

Enterprise is a mindset and creating a culture that supports ideas generation and promotes the development of entrepreneurial staff and students, is vital to achieving success. This means providing support and encouragement to do things that might be considered a bit ‘left field’ and providing opportunities to learn from others who have had the experience and know what it’s like to face hurdles and make mistakes.

Not everybody wants to start their own business but what’s important is to foster an environment that encourages creative thinking and the ability to contribute to sustainable solutions.

The SRUC Innovation Hub, led by Teresa Shutter, has developed the Orchard Programme, now in its fifth year, with successes already under its belt like Agrecalc, the farm carbon calculator and MI:RNA, an animal disease diagnostics company. As the name suggests, the Orchard nurtures individuals and groups to progress their innovations, providing signposting to in-house commercial acumen or external support and networks. Why is this so important? Through these innovations, brilliant ideas and new findings can be turned into products and services that bring state of the art solutions to today’s problems. But we mustn’t forget our past learnings. A core SRUC mission is to always stay relevant to the industry and fulfil our original purpose, which was to improve the productivity of Scotland’s land managers. We bring with us what is good, and add further skills and knowledge to support many, many enterprises across Scotland.

PLACE-BASED INITIATIVES

With six campuses, seven farms, 24 consultancy offices and over 7000 farmer subscribers, SRUC’s physical presence in Scotland, and beyond, is second-to-none. This allows us to interact with regional business and enterprise communities, supporting the response to regional challenges and emerging hot-spots of business interest.

Our connection deep into the natural economy and land-based industry is unique, and provides us not only with a great route to market for innovations, but also clear insight into the challenges and opportunities facing rural, food and farming businesses. It’s not just the livelihoods of the farmers and crofters, it’s whole communities and their well-being. An understanding of the distinctiveness of regions and their communities is essential if we are to achieve the ‘just transitions’ that we need.

MISSION-LED

The SRUC Challenge Centres focus on ‘Thriving Natural Capital’, ‘Responding to the Climate Emergency’ and ‘Safe and Improved Food’. These are the essential ingredients of a functioning natural economy and help build multidisciplinary answers to complex industry challenges, forging new relationships and partnerships with shared purpose.

Collaboration with partners in Europe, and more widely, has been made more challenging in recent years, but there is so much to learn and so much benefit to be gained from a vibrant international network that extra efforts must be made to ensure we have a strong international presence.

The Next Generation Of Entrepreneurs

The most important job of a College or University is supporting the development of those that can make the biggest impact on our future. SRUC’s Enterprise Academy for the Rural and Natural Economy, works with our educators to support and thread sustainability and enterprise within our programmes and actively encourages our students to develop themselves and their ideas to deliver economic, societal, and environmental benefits.

What these programmes do, is give space to our students to think differently, provide opportunities to explore those ‘left field’ concepts and ideas and most importantly, go out into the world with an entrepreneurial mindset.