Allan Scott, MBA Director at Aberdeen Business School, discusses entrepreneurship and how his university is engaging with the business community.
The Aberdeen Business School (ABS) runs the Charles P. Skene Centre for Entrepreneurship.
How do you engage with entrepreneurs and make sure your work is relevant to them?
"Broadly speaking our aim is to understand entrepreneurship and small businesses and to then disseminate that knowledge. Our main target is obviously our students at undergraduate, masters and Phd level, however we have a number of strong links with business. I am the Federation of Small Business’ professor, which means that I am very actively involved with over 200,000 small businesses. We also have a number of programmes, from across the university, aimed at business growth and small business owners.
"Our research is also important, we are now internationally recognised for the quality of our work. In fact, last year the work of two of our members was rated as being among the top twenty pieces in the world. However the purpose of our research is not just academic papers, we strive to make it useful for practitioners and policy makers."
Why are MBAs important to the UK economy?
"MBAs stimulate people to think about their world differently and bring about change in an organisation. Small differences in understanding and confidence can spark creativity and innovation. Some MBA students may be undertaking the course to build confidence to move from the corporate world to the business owner. Also, UK education attracts a lot of international students and this cultural mix can bring about opportunity in society."
What questions should an entrepreneur be asking themselves before they enrol on a course?
"Entrepreneurs need to consider their trajectory. How does that trajectory look and what are the skills and competencies needed along the journey? Clearly they are not the first to go down a particular path, so trying to develop a profile of competencies based on other people’s experience would a starting point. So desk research and networking would be a means to do this.
"However, once you know what you need you can start matching this to the programmes on offer. The business school does a lot of work providing free training to small companies. In the last three years, we have assisted over 200 companies."
ABS is heavily involved with the oil and gas industry. Explain why this is of interest to entrepreneurs?
"The oil and gas industry is made up of companies which range in size from sole operators to businesses with over 100,000 staff. It’s a technology driven industry and much of the innovation and creativity stems from the smaller companies, although these companies are sometimes later acquired by the bigger ones. Aberdeen Business School works with oil companies in a number of ways: consultancy; full education provision through degree or certificate programmes; research activity and training.
"The MBA has a strong relationship with the industry through the consultancy projects we offer, we have a MBA board and many guest seminars and lectures from the industry. The majority of our students are from this industry. We host many industry dinners and participate at some level with the main industry events. The consultancy project is an opportunity for a company to make use of an MBA to look at a strategic issue. We use Scottish Enterprise to help identify suitable small companies for these projects and our placement office for larger companies."