Member Article

Next generation of entrepreneurs must be nurtured

It’s Entrepreneurship Week on Bdaily. Here, Graham Harrison, partnership director of SETSquared gives his views on the next generation of entrepreneurs in the UK.

Entrepreneurs aren’t just people brave enough to take risks; they are quite possibly the saviours of our economy.

Why? They are the businessmen and women who have the potential to save us from the current ‘zombie business invasion’, which is greying the skies of the UK economy and leaving us with a stagnant landscape.

Much has been said about ‘zombie businesses’, those that are burdened with debt and unable to grow, but which are still generating enough cash to survive.

These businesses act as a drag on the recovery by taking sales from healthier rivals and using assets, including people, that could better be deployed by growing companies.

In my opinion, entrepreneurs are the ones who can save us from this ‘zombie invasion’, riding in like white knights and creating an army of small, lean, innovative companies that are able to identify new markets and retain the UK’s competitiveness on the global stage. Additionally, they are the ones who can give employment the well-needed boost it needs. With SMEs creating four million jobs a year across the EU at a time when employment in larger companies is largely static, the role of entrepreneurs in job creation is not to be underestimated.

This is why it is so important to nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs - they could be the saviours of our economy. A lot is being done to ensure the next generation comes through and indeed organisations like SETsquared are championing the drive. We are working in collaboration with partner universities to run workshops, competitions and events to encourage entrepreneurialism in students and, on a higher level, are working with those universities to inject entrepreneurialism into the curriculum. We have even sent UK students to the USA to learn how the Americans foster entrepreneurial spirit and bring the findings back to Blighty.

SETsquared is also working with existing businesses in the South to promote entrepreneurialism and we are constantly investing in those who have it by bringing them into our business incubation programme and nurturing them with access to some of the UK’s top business mentors.

It’s not just SETsquared that is leading the drive to develop these knights in shining armour. I was pleased to see the Government implement changes to the tax system which better incentivise those investing in start-up companies to best reflect the risk and rewards. It is also good to see Government has appointed two successful entrepreneurs in residence to advise on and champion this important agenda.

However, there is a great deal more that needs to be done if the UK is to keep up with the economic giants of the world and interestingly it seems there are three areas in which we are falling short as a nation. The first is cultural. As a nation we find it difficult to celebrate success and often knock those who achieve it. We should be taking a leaf from our ever-positive neighbours across the Atlantic, who positively ‘high five’ business success.

Second, we can further encourage entrepreneurialism through legislation. I recently read a statistic which showed that three years ago, self employment was first choice for 45 per cent of Europeans. Now that figure is down to 37 per cent. Either we are too scared to go it alone or it’s too difficult. In contrast that figure is 51 per cent in the USA and 56 per cent in China. I would like to see the Government do even more to foster a culture of entrepreneurialism and make it easier for people to take risks, whether it’s through being self employed, reducing corporation tax for start-ups or finding ways to reduce the stigma of bankruptcy for those who genuinely tried to make their business a success.

The final way in which we can foster entrepreneurialism is through education. We are already doing this working in partnership with universities but if we are able to instill the spirit in children much younger, by introducing it into the curriculum at school age, we are much more likely to be able to create a cultural shift.

Once we have ensured the sustainable development of the UK’s ‘entrepreneur army’ we can let them loose on the opportunities that are ripe for the picking. In the last three months one company that graduated from our incubator had a trade sale of $300m and another that is still in our incubator raised a further $8m in VC funds. Finance is there, it’s just the way to access it is changing.

Similarly, while we might be in the midst of a zombie invasion there is positivity in the form of growing sectors that our entrepreneurs can capitalise on. The sectors which are attracting most of the VC money, certainly in America which is biggest VC market in the world, is biotech and life sciences, where long-term investment is key. For short-term investment, web and e commerce continues to grow. In a world where ideas can be turned around extraordinarily quickly and taken to market, businesses can develop from simple ideas to high value corporations in just a few years. Tumblr’s recent sale to Yahoo is proof of that.

My biggest piece of advice to today’s entrepreneurs has been proven in the web and e commerce sector and that is to either identify a new market or generate something that we didn’t even know we needed.

Mark Zuckerberg did just that with Facebook and was a billionaire at age 23.

My vision is for businesses, government and educators in the UK to work together and produce some more Zuckerbergs of our own.

*SETsquared is a collaboration between the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey which partners in enterprise activities and collectively supports the growth and success of new business opportunities through spin-outs, licensing, incubation and education. The partnership also works with industry through research collaboration and consultancy.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by SETsquared .