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Scale Up Scotland Leadership Programme [2021]
Leadership Capacity
Key sectors
The Scale Up Scotland leadership programme is an 18-month programme offering a blend of experiential, business, and peer-to-peer learning to a cohort of ambitious Scottish entrepreneurs. Delivered by the Hunter Foundation it takes entrepreneurs through the critical components and complexity of business scaleup with the aim of enabling them to achieve their potential quicker.
Content is co-created and delivered by business practitioners and entrepreneurs; strong peer-to-peer learning is embedded throughout and underpinned by an academic rigour. Subjects covered include leadership, finance, building the right team, communications, sales and marketing, globalisation, crisis management and governance.
The programme is aimed at ambitious entrepreneurs and firms with a turnover of £1m+, existing customer traction and a clear line of sight to significant profitability. Participants need to demonstrate continual development both of themselves and their organisation throughout the programme.
The first cohort of 19 businesses finished the programme in June 2019, with participants increasing jobs by 98.9% and revenues as well as sales by 165%. The second cohort began in June 2019 but the programme paused in April 2020 due to Covid before restarting this September and is due to complete in March 2022. A third cohort commenced their journey in October 2021.
During the Covid suspension the Foundation concentrated on developing a digital platform launched in April. For future cohorts this will supplement their learning and facilitate the cascade of knowledge to their wider teams. It is also available to any business free of charge.
Scale Up Scotland is bringing to bear its networks and leveraging expertise from across the Scottish ecosystem for the benefit of participating scaleups to help them overcome their barriers to growth – a model that is recognised as effective. The early data of its impact is encouraging, the ScaleUp Institute will be watching this programme with interest as it progresses in coming years.
