This month's SBS blog featured posts on whether money may have had its day; the future of Prestwick airport and a look at Scotland's economic growth. Several of the posts attracted commentary from readers and if you missed any of the blog posts, then go to https://www.sbs.strath.ac.uk/blogs/SBS/ and you may wish to comment yourself!
Professor Jonathan Levie of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship delivered a master class in entrepreneurship to 70 post-doctoral research fellows in regional and urban policy in Brussels on October 8 as part of the European Commission DG Regio OpenDays week.
The following day, he presented to regional policy makers participating in the Open Days programme. The presentation included an introduction to a methodology he developed with Professor Erkko Autio of Imperial College to assess and enhance Scotland's innovation-based entrepreneurship ecosystem, which was used by the Scottish team on the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program and which is now being applied in other European regions and countries. On October 23, he presented on the same topic to a conference on entrepreneurship in Poland organised by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development.
Juliane Grasekamp, BA Management and Hospitality and Tourism Management (2012), is the founder of SnuggleMuffin, located on George Street. SnuggleMuffin is a boutique café and caterer that makes indulgent and beautiful cupcakes, cakes and dessert tables for every occasion which opened in July 2013.
Juliane has won a place at the prestigious London-based New Entrepreneurs Foundation class of 2014. The Foundation includes Founders such as Lord Davies of Abersoch CBE, Vice Chairman of Corsair Capital and Trustee, Oliver Pawle, former Vice Chairman of UBS's Investment Banking Division.
The Foundation selects 30 of the UK's "brightest, most entrepreneurially minded young people each year. We equip them with hands-on experience, skills and networks to build scalable businesses". The 12 month programme includes 10 months of learning and development workshops run by sponsors such as Deloitte, McKinsey and Tesco and a work placement programme, which Juliane adapted so that she could use her SnuggleMuffin café. The course also features classes at London Business School, University College London and the Centre of Entrepreneurial Learning at Cambridge Judge Business School.
Dr Derek Bryce from the Department of Marketing has been awarded a grant of £1000 by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland to support travel to Albania, Macedonia and Bulgaria. This will further his research, conducted with Dr Senija Čaušević of SOAS: University of London, into how these states recognise, develop and market their abundant Ottoman era heritage sites as visitor attractions.
This will continue the first stage of the project, where a number of sites of Islamic, Jewish, Christian Orthodox and Roman Catholic origin were visited in Bosnia & Herzegovina, for which a paper is already under review. The scope of the project is ambitious in that it examines how the often sensitive notions of national culture and religious identity are negotiated in commercial terms.
Professor Alan Wilson of the Marketing Department gave the keynote address at a Customer Experience Leadership Event in Windsor on September 26. Professor Wilson reported on recent research he has undertaken into the ways in which customer experience can be escalated to board level within organisations. The Customer Experience Leadership Group is a forum for Senior Customer Experience executives to share ideas and explore the essential aspects of Customer Experience Strategy.
Dr Matthew Revie was in Spain recently to teach the Analytical Support for Decision Making module of the Global Energy MBA run jointly by SBS, Iberdrola and Comillas Pontifical University. Students enjoyed a day trip visit to El Romeral wind farm in Toledo, just south of Madrid, with SBS lecturer Dr Matthew Revie and Comillas lecturer Andres Ramos.
The students were from Spain, Scotland, USA, Brazil and Mexico, and will be in Glasgow in November for their next module, Exploring the International Business Environment.
The department of Economics is delighted to share some good news for its PhD graduates:
Dr Spiros Gounaris, Department of Marketing, had a new manuscript accepted:
Tzempelikos N. and Gounaris S. (2014 - Forthcoming) "Relational Key Account Management: Building a Competitive Advantage through Structural Reformations and Relationship Management Skills", Industrial Marketing Management (ABS 3)