Green Gown Awards 2021: Enterprise - The University of Edinburgh - Finalist

Making ideas work for a better world: Student-led social enterprise

The Edinburgh Innovations’ Enterprise Service for Students supports innovation and entrepreneurialism in the student community. It provides students with a range of support to turn their impact driven ideas into reality, leading to benefits for local communities, the environment and specific groups or the wider society. This past year has been record breaking, with over two thousand students accessing the advice, funding, and support on offer, and more than one hundred student start-ups being supported. Over the last year, hundreds of one to one meetings between advisors and students have taken place, and over 70 per cent of applications to the Enterprise Foundation Programme have been impact driven.

The Startup Community Platform continues to grow, providing a space for students, recent graduates, and academics in the enterprise community to collaborate. Grant support, recognition, training workshops, an enterprise toolkit and the physical Student Enterprise Hub are further resources that are helping embed impact driven innovation and enterprise into the student experience.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Students want to make their ideas work for a better world.
2. Many projects coming forward from students require some sort of high level software engineering.
3. Applications to our programmes have changed, with student ideas having a strong focus on being impact driven.