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Case Studies News

Can Do Partners collaborate to deliver online Inclusion & Awareness workshops

Introduction: Stephanie Anderson works at Scottish Enterprise (SE) as a Project Manager for Entrepreneurial & Ecosystem Development. Working on everything from infrastructure and large development projects to casual business advice and supporting sectors with international opportunities, SE supports economic development plans across the central belt and the Northeast of Scotland.

Stephanie and her team work with company founders and businesses to develop their entrepreneurial and leadership skills, supporting them to build successful companies of scale. As part of their remit, they were responsible for the delivery of a series of Inclusion Awareness Workshops in March 2021.

Collective: Scottish Enterprise procured several business support organisations in January and February, to support the successful delivery of the workshops. They appointed three partners who each believe in the Scotland Can Do mission: AAI Employability; Tree of Knowledge; and Social Investment Scotland, all of which came together to form the series.

Falling under the overarching umbrella of Inclusion and Awareness, the eight half-day online interactive workshops were centred around various topics to help entrepreneurs and leaders increase their knowledge, understanding and skills around inclusion, diversity, equality and sustainable business practices.

Working together to support one another with complementary skill sets and areas of expertise, AAI Employability, Tree of Knowledge, and Social Investment Scotland collaborated to deliver the sessions about impactful entrepreneurship and how to use business for good.

The sessions created a safe space for people who genuinely wanted to make changes for the better within their business with themes ranging from disability and neurodiversity in the workplace; inclusive leadership; inclusive recruitment; purpose; resilience and personal impact to ways in which attendees could improve their leadership skills.

Stephanie Anderson comments:

“This project was delivered on quite a tight time scale, but we didn’t need to do a lot of prep work for it because our partners completely understood what we were working to achieve. We were all ultimately looking to achieve the same outcomes and, by working together, we were not only successful but we were also able to amplify it to a much wider audience.”

“In terms of being more inclusive, if we were just promoting this around the Scottish Enterprise network, we wouldn’t have been able to provide this opportunity to everyone in Scotland. When AAI and Social Investment Scotland put it out to their network, we connected with completely different pools of talent and businesses. This approach gave us the opportunity to engage with different audiences that might not have worked with Scottish Enterprise in the past.”

Impact: Stephanie continues,

“Generally the businesses who attended the workshops had between £50k and £500k turnover, however, to ensure we were more inclusive, we opened these up to everyone on a first come first serve basis. There was a real mix of attendees, and we used the sessions to pilot the demand out there in Scotland, especially since the pandemic.

“We also opened them up to companies that had staff on furlough creating an opportunity for them to keep their knowledge up to speed. The response was overwhelming and the feedback that we have received so far has been amazing. We asked people to list their top three takeaways and highlight whether there were specific things they were going to change or embed in their business following the sessions.”

“I think that the more that Scottish businesses are aware of diversity and inclusion issues – which some will have never dealt with before – the better armed they will be with information and the more confident they will be about what makes a good business.

“Just learning what these mean in practice will support business owners in creating a fairer, welcoming society. That is not just government-speak – it needs to be threaded through every business. If this culture is built-in as they grow, that is going to have a huge impact. If all these young companies can shape themselves with a business model which puts fairness and equality at its core, that will provide a great springboard for growth.

“In terms of the wider impact, we are hoping to see more diverse teams with people from different backgrounds being employed within businesses. That will lead to more innovative businesses in Scotland, with faster growth potential and better economic performance. While achieving this ultimate ambition is further down the line, these are small changes that will lead to greater innovation.”

Kieran Daly, Head of Market Building at Social Investment Scotland, feels this project established a strong platform for future partnership work with Scottish Enterprise. He commented:

“Our organisation offers investment, courses and business support to charities, social enterprises and mission-led businesses.

“This collaboration with Scottish Enterprises enabled us to support mission-led businesses and the wider business community to explore the relationship between investment and investee, as well as the range of debt and equity products in the market. Central to this was exploring the multiple benefits of environment, social and governance-driven investment, and how investing ethically can increase profitability. Looking at start up and scale up investment, we explored how to make approached to investors and ensure businesses find the right investors to suit their long-term strategy.”

Nick Murray, Enterprise Engagement Lead at AAI Employability, also highlighted the benefits of the collective approach to this project, saying:

“The most powerful thing about this collaboration was the genuine buy-in from Scottish Enterprise to allow those closest to these inclusive business practices to deliver things in their own way. Projects like this not only empower the businesses who attend, but also strengthens trust and transparency within the Scottish business ecosystem.

“AAI delivered six out of the eight events in this series, covering topics including neurodiversity in the workplace, cultural competency and ethical recruitment. We made a conscious effort to target businesses outside of our ‘purpose-driven echo chamber’, and were delighted to be oversubscribed for all of our workshops, with excellent feedback from those who attended.”

Gavin Oattes, Managing Director of Tree of Knowledge added his thoughts on the value of collaboration in the project, saying:

“The way we work is changing and bringing people together to collaborate on this project successfully blended many different experiences, skills and ideas in order to truly make a difference and inspire all those taking part.

“I wish I had the opportunity to take part in this type of project when I was starting out in business.”

Social Enterprise is looking to deliver further workshop sessions over the coming months. For the latest news and updates on upcoming sessions follow them on Twitter, Linked In, Instagram or Facebook.

To find out more about the support AAI EmployAbility, Tree of Knowledge and Social Investment Scotland can offer, visit their websites below:

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News Opinion

Female founders essential to economic recovery

Scottish innovation and entrepreneurship has been put to the test since the onset of the pandemic. With many sectors being severely impacted by two nation-wide lockdowns and ongoing social restrictions, we have seen many businesses forced to adapt and focus their efforts on new markets, while a number of start-ups have also emerged to leverage opportunities created within the adversity of Covid-19.

During this time we’ve seen some great examples of collaborative working to promote innovation across a range of businesses, including those which are women-led.  With support from the Women’s Business Station and its wider network, Dundee-based businesswoman Audrey Glen pivoted her focus from her wedding and events business, which was severely hit from the early onset of the first lockdown, to a new virtual Admin/PA company, Audrey Virtual Assistant, which she launched last summer.

Companies like these, being set up by inspiring and enterprising women, not only demonstrate the resilience of Scotland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem but are also an essential aspect of our future economic growth.

Women owned businesses currently contribute £8.8bn to the Scottish economy (Women’s Enterprise Scotland (WES), 2021) and it’s estimated that helping more of them succeed could add a further £13bn in economic value and create over 300,000 jobs (WES, 2021). As the Scottish Government reported last year, closing the existing entrepreneurial gender gap and helping create more female-founded businesses could result in economic growth of up to 5% as well as 35,000 new jobs.

Increasing the level of female-founded businesses has also been a key focus for the UK Government. In 2019, Alison Rose reported on her Treasury-commissioned independent review of female entrepreneurship which shed a light on the barriers faced by women in starting and growing businesses and identified ways of unlocking this untapped talent. In response to her report, the UK Government announced a plan to increase the number of the nation’s female entrepreneurs by 600,000 by 2030 with a series of phased steps being taken in collaboration with industry to help achieve this ambition.

Extra support for female entrepreneurs is more vital than ever given the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on women, especially those in lower income households. Women are more likely than men to work in sectors such as hospitality, retail, leisure, tourism and travel that have been most affected by lockdown restrictions. Changing work patterns, due to home schooling and increased caring responsibilities, have also taken their toll on women who have been found twice as likely to give up paid work to care for children, elderly relatives and ill family members during the Covid crisis.

Women’s Enterprise Scotland have launched the Women’s Business Centre as a free digital resource to help women bring their business ideas to life and flourish as business owners. Since launch the site has supported hundreds of women to start up with practical support and inspiring stories.

The Resilience and Recovery report, based on data from Beauhurst’s Covid-19 Business Impact Tracker, cited a continued equity funding gap between male and female-led companies last year. It reported that just 13 per cent of total equity investment in 2020 went towards female-founded start-ups. Where investment was made, it tended to be for smaller amounts even though research shows that once female-founded businesses have received an initial investment, they are just as likely to raise additional rounds of funding compared to male-founded firms. Mint Ventures is a new business angel investment club on a mission to enable more women to become investors and support diverse teams so more female founders can access capital.

Jackie Waring, Founder & CEO Investing Women Angels & AccelerateHER comments,

“Increasing investment in female founded companies in Scotland is an imperative for the future health and growth of our economy.  At Investing Women, 90% of our investment has backed female founders leading often pioneering scientific and medical breakthroughs and ground breaking technologies. We have such incredible female talent here in Scotland; it’s time for transformational change in the level of investment we make in that talent and the depth of ‘readiness’ support we give to these founders whose innovations improve health, lives, the environment and Scotland’s international competitiveness.”

There is clearly an opportunity to reset the business landscape in Scotland beyond the pandemic and support women by promoting a can-do attitude within an entrepreneurial society. This is where the Can Do Collective has a significant role to play, by demonstrating ways in which collaborative working between Scottish female-led businesses can help to inspire others, nurture a stronger entrepreneurial spirit and ultimately accelerate economic growth.

The Can Do Collective has established itself as a driving force for post-COVID recovery plans across the nation. Working in close collaboration, the Can Do Collective is a community of 70+ enterprise support organisations whose mission is to build a world-leading entrepreneurial, innovative and creative society.  Can Do Partners such as Association of Scottish Businesswomen, Women’s Business Station, Women’s Enterprise Scotland, Investing Women and Business Women Scotland, among others, will continue to focus on how Scotland can further promote female entrepreneurship across the nation.

Bronwen Thomas, Digital Projects and Marketing Manager at Women’s Enterprise Scotland (WES) comments,

“By working together to enable women to start up and thrive in business we can build back better and close widening gender gap in enterprise participation to create a significant boost for the Scottish economy.”

Hazel Jane, Convener of the Can Do Collective, comments:

‘We must ensure that the impact of the pandemic serves as a catalyst for positive change, which includes increasing the level of female-founded businesses in Scotland – not simply to readdress the disproportionate impact that Covid has had upon women but also as an effective means of rebuilding the Scottish economy long into the future’

Find out more at www.cando.scot

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News Press Releases

Quarter of a million Scots entrepreneurs set up business in 2020

A quarter of a million people in Scotland were setting up or running new businesses in 2020, despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey has found.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Scotland 2020 (GEM) report estimates that 7.3% of the Scottish population – 247,000 adults – were actively engaged in setting up a business or already running an enterprise established in the last three-and-a-half years. A further 5.7%  – 194,000 – were entrepreneurs running more established businesses.

Around 60,000 young people in Scotland, or 13% of 18-24 year olds, were early-stage entrepreneurs, the highest rate among the home nations. Entrepreneurship among people under 30 years old in Scotland has steadily grown from being the lowest in the UK at 3.5% in the 2007/09 period.

GEM measures rates of entrepreneurship across multiple phases in the general adult population. In 2020, nearly 140,000 people from 46 economies across the globe were surveyed, with 2,019 responses from Scotland, making it the world’s most authoritative comparative study of entrepreneurial activity.

The study found that Scotland had similar rates of total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA) to other nations within the UK, mainly because Scotland held steady in the face of the pandemic while early-stage entrepreneurial activity in England suffered a significant decline from 2019 rates.

The Highlands and Islands region had the highest proportion of 18-64-year-olds in early-stage entrepreneurial activity (8.7%), followed by South Western Scotland (7.4%), Eastern Scotland (6.9%) and North Eastern Scotland (6.5%). In North Eastern Scotland, there has been a significant decline in the TEA rate from 2019 (8.7%) to 2020 (6.5%), while the rest of Scotland held steady despite the pandemic.

Around 5.3% of adult women in Scotland were trying to set up a new business or running a young business in 2020 compared to 9.3% of men – a rate that has changed little over the last decade and makes the gender gap in Scotland the highest amongst the home nations.

Further, there is a significant gender difference in reasons for trying to start a business with 62% of men citing the building of “great wealth or a very high income” as a key motivation compared to only 51% of women. In contrast, 76% of female early-stage entrepreneurs in Scotland, compared to 57% of males, indicated that a key reason they were trying to start a business was “to earn a living because jobs are scarce”.

Following previous trends, the TEA rate of the white ethnic population in the Scotland in 2020 was lower than that of the non-white population, at 7.05% compared to 12.95% respectively. However, the TEA rate for the non-white ethnic group was lower than the rate in 2019 (16.8%), while it remained comparable for the white ethnic group. This suggests that amid the higher rates of entrepreneurial activity among ethnic minorities, there is greater precarity too.

In Scotland, contrary to the trend in the wider UK, both the most deprived quintile and the least deprived quintile reported similarly high TEA levels, of around 9%. The most deprived 20% were thus just as likely to start a business as the wealthiest 20% in Scotland in 2020.

Dr Samuel Mwaura, lecturer in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship and co-lead of the GEM Scotland study, said:

“Despite the pandemic, there were around 250,000 entrepreneurs that were actively trying to set up a business in 2020 in Scotland, helping keep entrepreneurial activity on a par with 2019.

“Historically, we know that new businesses play a vital role in the recovery from major crises, however in 2020 immediate and sustained efforts to mitigate the coronavirus crisis prioritised more established businesses to the neglect of startup entrepreneurs.

“Many of the 250,000 startup entrepreneurs in 2020 will thus not have accessed much needed support and our findings suggest that thousands have thus had to delay the operationalisation of their new businesses. It is likely that many of these businesses will never see the light of day.

“We also found significant regional disparities among the four regions of Scotland, each with unique strengths and vulnerabilities. This means that different regions have different needs and tailored support is required. It is encouraging to see regional support infrastructure develop, such as Aberdeen City Region, and the new South of Scotland Enterprise.”

Dr Sreevas Sahasranamam, co-lead of the GEM Scotland study, said:

“Our findings on rates of entrepreneurial activity among young people under 30 in 2020 gives us a lot to both celebrate and draw lessons from.

“The success of this group has come from substantial investments in well-integrated national programmes such as The Prince’s Trust, the Bridge to Business programme for schools and the Scottish University Scale-Up Consortium, among others.

“Many individual universities in Scotland are also making entrepreneurship a more strategic priority internally for their students and graduates while also taking a greater role in supporting the wider ecosystem, such as Strathclyde’s partnership with Glasgow City Council, Scottish Enterprise, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurial Scotland to create the Glasgow City Innovation District.

“These initiatives provide fantastic case-studies of best practice that is working for young people that can be suitably adapted to address the issues we continue to observe in entrepreneurship among women and ethnic minorities as well as the regional disparities.

“Another related trend we noted was the highest entrepreneurial activity within Scotland’s most deprived quantiles, suggesting a case of entrepreneurship being seen as an emancipation tool.

“It was very encouraging to note that despite the pandemic nearly half the early-stage entrepreneurs in Scotland saw new opportunities, which augers well for an economic recovery.”

Sean McGrath, Chief Executive Officer, Entrepreneurial Scotland, said:

“These are eye catching and hugely-reassuring figures. They support the view that individuals who have an entrepreneurial mindset are key players in the economic recovery. 

“Against all the odds and in the midst of a health crisis the like of which none of us have ever lived through before, it is deeply encouraging to learn that so many individuals are either engaged in business creation or running one.

“This is undoubtedly good news and comes at a time when people everywhere are endeavouring to drive Scotland’s economy forward and out of the difficulties caused by the pandemic.”

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Blogs News

Katy Brown, Co-Founder of Skylark Works

Introducing new Partner Skylark Works ….

Hi Katy, welcome to Can Do! Can you tell us a bit about yourself?:

I’m the co-founder and MD of purpose-led consultancy Skylark Works. I’m a committee member for Philanthropy Impact, supporting the growth of philanthropy and social investment across the UK and Europe. I’m also a crisis volunteer with Shout, the UK’s crisis text service, and a volunteer management consultant with Inspiring Scotland and The Cranfield Trust.

I’m passionate about purposeful work, social impact and impact investing. And I’m always looking to use my experience to connect the commercial world with meaningful purpose and genuine impact.

About Skylark Works:

In a nutshell we help businesses do good and charities do business. We’re a purpose-led consultancy and Oxford University spin-out offering:

  • Philanthropy and social impact advice for businesses and HNWIs
  • Strategic planning, delivery support and coaching for charities and social ventures

What motivated you to become a Scotland Can Do Partner?

I think it’s time to rethink growth. Business is no longer just about profit but about how we help our people and planet too. The Covid crisis, the climate emergency and social inequality are profound and pressing problems that can only be solved if we harness the huge potential of entrepreneurs, innovation and enterprise. It’s about leading on purpose, focusing on sustainability and delivering on impact. The need to do this is unavoidable and urgent. Together, we can help make it happen.

How do you contribute to the Scotland Can Do ambition; for Scotland to be the most entrepreneurial and innovative society for all?

Our goal is to support businesses, social enterprises and charities to be more effective, resilient and sustainable – and in doing so, to make an even greater impact. We always try to bring together diverse perspectives and voices from across sectors to think about things differently and find innovative solutions. We hope that through our support, we can play a small part in helping to foster an innovative and entrepreneurial culture here in Scotland.

If you would like help to deliver real social impact, find out more about Skylark Works.

Just for fun …. What is the most true stereotype of Scottish people or Scotland?

They’re a friendly bunch! And I’m not sure you’d find macaroni pies south of the border…