High-growth Scottish businesses invited to help scale-up Scotland

Responding to research that Scotland must boost its number of scale-up companies in order to promote economic growth, Entrepreneurial Scotland and The Hunter Foundation have formed a partnership to deliver a new scale-up leadership programme.

Starting this Autumn, the 18-month Scale-up Scotland programme will guide entrepreneurs through the key areas of scaling including leadership, finance, building the right team, communications, sales and marketing, globalisation, crisis management and governance.

Participants will also have the option of visiting leading entrepreneurs in the US, China and Africa and to take part in other programmes such as the CAN DO Scale Summer School.

To qualify for the programme, businesses must have a turnover of £1.5m or over, existing customer traction and a clear plan for profitability.

Sir Tom Hunter, of The Hunter Foundation, said: “I believe we’ve cracked the start-up nut in Scotland, now the real challenge is to convert far more to scale-up businesses, something that is pivotal to our competitive advantage, jobs and economic growth.

“By the last estimate if there was 1% more scale-ups in the UK this would yield 150,000 new jobs and add £225 billion to GDP by 2034 – Scotland needs to disproportionately lead in this.”

Sandy Kennedy, chief executive of Entrepreneurial Scotland, added: “Entrepreneurial Scotland’s vision is for Scotland to be the most entrepreneurial society in the world.

“The scale-up challenge is the biggest issue facing Scotland’s economy right now. Get it right and the prize is huge in terms of wealth and job creation. The Scale-up Scotland programme is an example of how we must all work together across the public, private and third sectors to seize this prize.