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The University of Strathclyde’s latest piece of research should make for sober reading among Scotland’s entrepreneurs. According to the latest annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), the country’s early stage entrepreneurial activity lags behind that of the UK as a whole. The key stat is that over the last twelve months, Scotland’s Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity rate was unchanged at 3.7%; significantly lower than the UK rate of 5.6%. The report also highlights a ‘lost generation’ of entrepreneurs with a gap in total early-stage entrepreneurial activity for people in their thirties – in stark contrast to the trend for the rest of the UK. The report's author, Dr Jonathan Levie of the University's Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, commented: ‘We cannot recover this l
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Following on from last year’s blog about Acquamara, the Scottish company which is selling filtered seawater to chefs, it is good to see similar enterprise being shown by another Scottish company called Just Seaweed. The company was founded on the Isle of Bute in 2007 by Iain McKellar and his wife Yvonne. McKellar also worked as a milkman but, when he was made redundant from that job eighteen months ago, he decided to concentrate on Just Seaweed. He now harvests over a dozen different types of seaweed from the rocky shores of Bute. He cuts the plants from the rocks using a clam shell and, via his website, sells both fresh and dried sea vegeta
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Vistage Scotland hosted a highly successful member guest day in Edinburgh yesterday. Around fifty Vistage Scotland members and guests were at the Merchants’ Hall to take part in Larry King’s presentation on Building an Entrepreneurial Team for Strategic Success. A Vistage Speaker of the Year in North America, Australia and Asia, Larry has given over a thousand seminars in six continents over the last twelve years and his experience shone through. Starting from the basis that ‘leadership is accomplishing significant things through other people’, Larry led the audience through a series of dynamic group workshops that illustrated his ideas on the role of the CEO. Much more interactive than a simple speech or talk, the session encouraged each table to discuss their own experiences and exchan
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The blog was cheered by a brief item in The Scotsman in which the Royal Bank of Scotland announced that Scotland had a higher growth rate of start-ups than the rest of the country. Usually, Scotland is portrayed as lagging behind when it comes to entrepreneurial spirit; so it was heartening to read that the bank had supported some 11,000 new businesses over the last twelve months. Those 11,000 new businesses represent an 18% increase on the previous year. According to the report, start-up growth was up by a smaller 11% across the rest of the UK. Any warm feeling of optimism was quickly frozen by a single line in the readers’ comments column with one wag noting that eleven thousand is ‘an awful lot of
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You have to admire the chutzpah of Andy Inglis, an East Lothian-based entrepreneur, who has hit upon the idea of bottling Hebridean seawater and selling it to chefs at £4.95 for three litres.
Branded as Acquamara, the water comes from around the island of Berneray. Inglis purifies it and bottles it before selling it on.
It is supposed to enhance the flavour of seafood cooked using it and Inglis has even managed to put a health conscious spin on the stuff.
Top chefs such as Roy Brett of Edinburgh
