The University of Strathclyde has launched a new five-year strategic plan to help entrepreneurial students and staff make an impact far beyond its campus.

The Reaching Beyond strategy sets out to ‘redefine what it means to be an entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial university’, with the university aiming to help Scotland become a more productive and internationally competitive nation.

Launched last week at the Strathclyde Inspire Summit, where more than £180,000 in funding was awarded to new ventures and entrepreneurs, the Reaching Beyond strategy outlines four goals, including nurturing changemakers, supporting diverse entrepreneurial opportunities, guiding founders towards capital, and empowering growth businesses.

A core element of the strategy will focus on nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurial thinkers, with the university hoping to create a powerful community of changemakers who can help to redefine entrepreneurship as being ‘beyond business’.

According to Strathclyde University, the overarching mission will be to provide inclusive support for individuals and ventures, both within and beyond the university, at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey.

“At Strathclyde, we purposefully define entrepreneurship as beyond the act of starting a business,” said Fiona Ireland, head of entrepreneurship strategy at Strathclyde University.

“We recognise the transformative power of developing people with entrepreneurial mindsets who can challenge existing norms, drive innovation, seek opportunity and move towards a better future.

“Expanding our focus from an institutional level to a societal level, we will also extend our reach beyond the walls of the university, beginning with a number of schools participating in the Summit.”

Since the first university-wide entrepreneurship strategy was launched in 2020, Strathclyde claims to have supported the creation of a further 106 start-ups and spin-outs, as well as seeing many of those founders go on to win the Converge Challenge main category, and was named European Entrepreneurial University of the Year in 2023.

In the past five years, Strathclyde said it has raised £8 million in equity returns and generated licensing income of £3.7 million, and helped investee companies raise a total of £152.4 million across 51 deals, at an average of £2.99 million per deal, 45% higher than the Scottish average for high growth investment

“The Strathclyde team that delivers these activities themselves exemplify the best of our entrepreneurial spirit through their innovative approaches, pushing our risk appetite and focusing on delivery,” said Professor Sir Jim McDonald, principal and vice-chancellor of Strathclyde.

“Our new strategy aims to go beyond our growing success as a leading entrepreneurial campus so we can create a new standard for entrepreneurship in the university sector at large.

“This transformative approach represents more than an institutional strategy; it is a blueprint for universities in the 21st century.”

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Strathclyde is not the only institution to have adapted its strategy for success.

In October, the University of Aberdeen announced a new approach to fostering spinout culture that saw the university reducing its equity stake in an attempt to increase innovation and accelerate the commercialisation of intellectual property.

Under the new policy, Aberdeen Uni’s equity share in new businesses could be as low as 5%, compared to the previous 21% minimum rate, with the move making Aberdeen one of the first universities in Scotland and the UK to introduce key recommendations from the independent review of university spinouts that was commissioned by HM Treasury.

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