Making Connections: Scottish Institute for Enterprise (SIE)

Representative of the SIE: Dawn Shand
Location of meeting: The DCA cafe
Objective: How the work of the SIE relates to my personal project

At my meeting with Dawn Shand we focused on the importance of the private sector seeing the need and benefit of providing a space where new businesses can work together.

Dawn was able to tell me about an event that is happening on the 22 March 2012 called ‘Summit’.  The event is being held in Glasgow concert hall and will house almost 500 students from all over Scotland.  The event is a celebration of entrepreneurship for Scotland’s students and graduates that will feature a full programme of inspiring speakers and include the announcement of the New Ideas and New Ventures Competition winners.

Dawn emphasized that the event provides the SIE with a physical network of people where students can benefit from speaking to each other.  In doing this they are building up a ‘virtual community’ which means that they are able to share ideas about how to set up a business with people who share the same goal in business.  I think it’s important that students don’t feel isolated as they start out in business but instead realise that there are other people in the same boat as them!

In telling Dawn about my plan for my personal project on the theme of collaborative working, she showed great interest.  She was able to inform me of other company’s who do a similar thing, however not as part of a University.  My plan now is to research further into the following companies:
-Entrepreneurial Spark, Glasgow
-Citizen M, Glasgow
-Freelance World, Aberdeen

As I want to link a collaborate design space to the University of Dundee, Dawn helped me to think about the potential benefits that a space like this could bring to the University so that they too could benefit from the space.  We talked about how we could ‘sell’ DJCAD to students (particularly from countries other than Scotland) as a place to invest their talent in design.  If students knew that a space existed that housed graduates who had a design/business venture then perhaps they would choose DJCAD?

Overall, I found my meeting with Dawn very helpful.  I plan to keep in contact with her during my design process in order to gain more insight into the SIE.