New Enterprise Hub launched in Scotland by Royal Academy of Engineering to catalyse entrepreneurship

And now, a new facility tapping into the spirit of collaboration to foster innovation is set to launch today to help engineering and technology entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses in Scotland – and continue the nation’s proud history of landmark new discoveries.

The Enterprise Hub Scotland venture is being debuted by the Royal Academy of Engineering, with the intention of supporting local entrepreneurs in commercialising deeptech innovations, spinning out companies from universities, and attracting further external investment.

The organisation also says the initiative builds on its success “across the UK as one of Europe’s leading start-up hubs”, with its activity in this regard having, since, 2013 supported more than 350 researchers, recent graduates, and leaders of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to grow businesses, with Hub members having gone on to create almost 6,000 jobs and raise in excess of £1.3 billion in additional funding. The Academy adds that its Hub has north of the Border already supported 35 early-stage entrepreneurs, and awarded £1.6 million in total grant funding to date.

The Enterprise Hub Scotland, currently based in Glasgow, is supported by Glasgow City Council, Glasgow City Innovation District, the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland that has a major facility in Paisley, and Scottish Enterprise. Led by senior enterprise manager Emma Loedel, it looks to champion engineering excellence across Scotland and support local entrepreneurs tackling complex environmental, economic, and societal challenges.

The Academy lays out how its recent research highlights some of the current opportunities and challenges facing Scotland’s innovation ecosystem. It states that Engineering Economy & Place, an analysis done with Metro Dynamics in 2023, showed that the engineering economy accounted for more than a quarter of all Scottish jobs, with Aberdeenshire and West Lothian particular recruitment hotspots.

Furthermore, the Academy says nearly a third of the UK’s deeptech companies are based in Edinburgh, partly thanks to organisations such as Scottish Enterprise – which in November said it had supported the highest-ever number of academic spin-outs via its High Growth Spinout Program in its most recent financial year.

The Royal Academy of Engineering also points out that Scotland leads the UK in investment in spin-outs operating in critical technology sectors such as semiconductors and telecommunications, according to an analysis of the topic it conducted with Beauhurst.

However, it cites data showing that Scotland produces spin-outs at a rate 50 per cent lower than the rest of the UK, relative to the amount of research funding received. “British Business Bank research indicates that the average equity deal for [SMEs] was smaller than the UK average, and the Scottish National Investment Bank has previously identified a funding gap of between £217m and £1.5bn for scale-ups,” it also states.

Enterprise Hub Scotland will help to address these challenges by collaborating with other organisations to support engineers and innovators to develop their commercial skills, offering mentoring and profiling deep tech talent within Scotland. Following in the footsteps of the Academy’s Enterprise Hubs in Northern Ireland and Wales, it will offer programmes for entrepreneurial engineers at different career stages, with benefits highlighted including equity-free funding, and access to mentoring from the engineers and business-leaders that make up the Academy’s Fellowship.

Scottish business leaders who have been through the Hub scheme in London, and will now be supported by the Scottish equivalent, include Dr Sam Chapman, the co-founder of sustainable brick-maker Kenoteq that is based at Heriot-Watt University on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

Professor Sir Jim McDonald, the Glaswegian president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: “Scotland has a proud history of innovation, and a rich heritage that underpins its engineering economy today. Opening our first Enterprise Hub in Scotland marks an exciting step in the Academy’s journey to support ambitious, high-potential engineering and deeptech entrepreneurs across the country.

"I am delighted that the Academy is launching this new initiative in my home city of Glasgow within the vibrant ecosystem that is growing through the Glasgow City Innovation District. This is another bold strategic investment by our Academy, and I look forward to seeing the innovative, home-grown talent that this exciting venture will support in the future.”

Gillian Gregg, head of regional engagement at the Academy, said: “The Enterprise Hub can provide a shop window for local innovators to a global network of investors who specialise in sectors where Scotland is strong. We’re incredibly excited to launch this new Enterprise Hub to champion a diverse pool of entrepreneurs across Scotland, and help them to realise their full potential. We look forward to collaborating further with other organisations within Scotland’s dynamic innovation ecosystem to support local commercialisation and investment in engineering and technology.”

The Royal Academy of Engineering says it was conceived in the late 1960s, “during the excitement of the Apollo programme and the buzz of Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’”, and became a reality in 1976, the year of Concorde’s first commercial flight. More recently, it was announced in March of this year that a scientist at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University specialising in ultrafast lasers, John C. Travers, had been awarded a £2.5m Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies.

Now, the Academy says: “In collaboration with our Fellows and partners, we’re growing talent and developing skills for the future, driving innovation and building global partnerships… Together we’re working to tackle the greatest challenges of our age.” In this vein, Graham Bell once said: “The inventor is a man who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world.”