HOW to scale up Scotland’s start-ups into billion-pound businesses will be a key item on the agenda at next week’s Entrepreneurial Scotland annual conference at Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire.
“Scotland has a unique opportunity as a small nation to do something huge,” said Boston-based entrepreneur and educator Bill Aulet, who will deliver one of the key sessions at the event.
“We know how to start-up companies and get ten, 20, 30 employees – but how do we get those companies to become billion pound global companies?” Mr Aulet asked. “They need to know how to scale up.”
A former IBM executive who went on to raise more than $100m in funding and create hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value for three technology businesses he co-founded or co-led, Mr Aulet is now a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde and leads the development of entrepreneurship education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s top universities.
Digital entrepreneur and Entrepreneurial Scotland chair Chris van der Kuyl will chair the event, which focuses on the theme of ‘disruption’ – typically defined as breakthrough improvements in technology, processes or behaviour that unlock new or previously unreachable markets.
“Scotland has a real opportunity to become the most entrepreneurial society in the world,” Mr van der Kuyl said. “The only way we will achieve that is by being both disruptive and innovative at the same time and finding amazing businesses that we can scale up to become world beaters.”
Other speakers on the day will include engineering entrepreneur and Ferguson Shipbuilders owner Jim McColl; Mike Welch, who set up sold his Peebles-based Blackcircles tyre business to French giant Michelin for £50m in 2015; Lesley Eccles, co-founder of fantasy sports firm FanDuel – one of Scotland’s ‘unicorns’ – tech start-ups valued at more than $1 billion – and Bob Keiller, the former chief executive of Wood Group.
“We are incredibly fortunate that in Scotland we are able to bring all this expertise together at Gleneagles to benefit all the entrepreneurially minded individuals attending - the people who are working hard to strengthen the country’s economy and society,” said Sandy Kennedy, chief executive of Entrepreneurial Scotland.
Delegates will also hear from Rod Mountain, a cancer surgeon working for NHS Tayside, about how entrepreneurship in the public sector is transforming the NHS.
Steve Dunlop, chief executive of Scottish Canals, will share how the £43m Helix project has transformed 350 hectares of under-used land in Falkirk into a new world-class visitor attraction.
Speakers will also include Julie Wilson and Amy Livingstone of Edinburgh-based chewable dribble bib maker Cheeky Chompers; Mike Loggie, chief executive of Aberdeen-based oilfield equipment business Saltire Energy; Karen Marshall of leather wholesaler Bridge of Weir Leather Company and Ron McCulloch, co-founder of New York-based online business JJJ International
Around 250 delegates are registered to attend the event, which was set up by the former Entrepreneurial Exchange in 1994 and has been held at Gleneagles every year since 1997.
The Entrepreneurial Scotland Annual Conference is open to members and non-members. To book a place contact: kylie.forrest@entrepreneurialscotland.com.
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