SBS Blog > Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship embraces strategy and innovation with name change by Niall MacKenzie

Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship embraces strategy and innovation with name change

By Niall MacKenzie - Posted on 15 August 2024

The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship has been renamed the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation - here, new head of department Professor Niall MacKenzie reveals the reason for the change and his plans for the future with Sir Tom Hunter's name firmly at the centre.

The Hunter Centre has grown over the years. It started off as a small centre then became a full department of the university and it’s since become wider ranging in its remit and its social mission. However, it has always retained the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship name since it started 24 years ago (2000/2001). Now, it encompasses scholarship, knowledge exchange and teaching activities around entrepreneurship strategy, and innovation. Those are very complementary areas: you can’t really have one without the other. The department’s growth and increase in its scope is basically reflective of the wider understanding we have of its role within the University, its role within Scottish society and further afield. The Hunter Centre having a more encompassing focus has happened naturally over a period of years so the name change is not an overnight decision; it’s more that we needed to reflect the changes in scope and focus for the department over many years while crucially – and this is really important – still staying true to its original founding principles which are:

· To raise entrepreneurial capacity of Strathclyde students, staff and alumni

· To lead on entrepreneurial research in Scotland

· To promote entrepreneurship as a career and a profession

Founding principles

I think the Department has lived up to those three principles – to my mind there’s no question of that. We now have Strathclyde Inspire within the University so there’s now an entrepreneurship strategy for the whole university; the Hunter Centre has now been around for almost 25 years, it’s created many hundreds of graduates, many businesses – it’s definitely had its impact within Strathclyde especially but also within wider Scottish society. That’s the first mission accomplished.

On the second mission – to lead on entrepreneurial research in Scotland – well, we’ve been doing that for 24 years so no question there.

And as regards the last principle we can point to numerous examples of our students who’ve come through either as graduates or through taking courses in the department who have gone on to create businesses or gone on to lead businesses. And this is where the strategy and innovation parts become really important because we know that entrepreneurship is not just about starting businesses, it’s about growing and scaling businesses and helping make existing businesses better and more successful. So this entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation component is really about bringing together the different parts of that understanding into a cogent piece for the department but also for the university and more widely.

The Hunter Foundation

The Hunter Foundation is still very involved in the life of the department. I was on a call with Ewan Hunter, the CEO of the Hunter Foundation, as soon as I took up my new role. They are still very interested in what we do, they’re engaged, and very supportive. They’re supportive of the name change as well and recognise that the department has evolved and grown from the original premise, and we’re really seeking to further develop those links. They’re supporting appointments of new staff through the endowment, and they’ve been really helpful and supportive of the journey that we’ve been on in the department so a very strong relationship there and one we want to foster and continue to grow.

The Hunter name is the brand. If you talk to anyone in business in Scotland and even across the UK they know what the Hunter Centre is, they’ve heard of the Hunter Centre because it’s been around for so long. It’s one of the longest established entrepreneurship centres in the UK which people may not appreciate but it’s something I’d like to work on a bit more in raising awareness further still because a lot of good has been achieved with the Hunter name attached to the work we’ve done here. It’s a critical part: there are other departments of entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation but there’s only one Hunter Centre and people recognise that. Sir Tom’s a very successful and famous name and the Hunter name is one we want to continue to honour with our work here.

Future plans

For the future, primarily we want to build on the expertise here in the Hunter Centre. The Hunter Centre and Strathclyde have the deepest and broadest knowledge of this space in Scotland. In terms of the collective number of academics, you’d struggle to find more expertise anywhere else, certainly in Scotland, and I think that’s really important. What we’re doing is building on this long history of delivering this world-class research, education and knowledge exchange so the intention is to continue to work with that, to continue to recognise the changing context, trends, technology and ways of working and to help prepare students, staff and others for what the future holds. It’s keeping in mind the original mission principles of the department but adapting them and working with them for the 21st century.

University-wide entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship isn't just contained within the Hunter Centre of course - we’ve got a great relationship with Strathclyde Inspire. I met with them on my first day and one of the first things I sought to do was to seek them out and say, right, what do you want from us, what do you need from us, and how can we work together? So, we’ve got a great relationship with them, we speak to them daily. And we’ve got some suggestions and ideas of what we can do together. Strathclyde Inspire is the entrepreneurship strategy for the university and the Hunter Centre has obviously played a role in the creation of that but also in the operation of it as well and we continue to play that role. We've got academics at the Hunter Centre that are working in a range of different areas who are really engaged and keen to do more in that space. We’ve got an Enterprise for All module, we’ve got a massive online, open course on entrepreneurship as well through Strathclyde Inspire so we're working with them on lots of different things and it’s a really nice, positive relationship actually. It’s one where, again, you can point to the long history of Strathclyde being committed to this space - we’ve been committed to developing useful knowledge, useful learning in this space - and so Strathclyde Inspire is a really nice way of doing that at a University level so it’s not just residing in the department, it’s not just residing in the business school but it resides across the whole institution and that’s what we’re looking to try and push further along working closely with colleagues in Strathclyde Inspire.

Social mission

The Hunter Centre is one of the few academic departments in the UK with an explicit social mission. So often with academic departments they will talk about what they do or how they do it or so on but the 'why' is missing and here at the Hunter Centre the why is really, really apparent. Our job here is to engage and develop entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation within the business population, within the student population, within the university population and our job is to make sure we return social value on the basis of Sir Tom’s original bequest to the University. So those three founding principles that I mentioned earlier? I thought long and hard about what I want to do in this role coming back to the University and it was that social mission which really attracted me. It’s that ability to think, well, I’m not just a cog in a wheel here - we’re engaging with the ecosystem, engaging with businesses, with industry, with policy makers, with charities, third sector, social enterprises and we’re developing that kind of useful learning, and that’s what was really motivating for me to come back and do something in this space. You want to build something, you want to develop something but a lot of that comes down to where’s the best place to do it and it was really clear here that Strathclyde offered that space, offered that environment so I found it very alluring to come back and build something around this, build on existing achievements, existing expertise, and really focus on how we can help Scottish society and society more generally.

The bigger picture

The Hunter Centre is not just about helping people start a business. It’s about innovative and holistic thinking – the bigger picture - and that’s a reflection of the department’s growing maturity. It comes with time and any entrepreneur will tell you that when they start off, they don’t know what they don’t know so they make mistakes. Our job is to try and help them get past that stage and get to the point where they are thinking about growth and growing. Then, once they get to a certain level of success, hopefully they think about giving back. That’s how all successful entrepreneurial ecosystems operate, and our job is to work towards that in Scotland. The Hunter Centre has played an important role in developing entrepreneurship in Scotland, but we are nowhere near done. There is much more to do and more to come.