Thoughts and discoveries

I'm all for giving some“crazy entrepreneurs” their head, and, believe me, I understand at first hand how the public sector can some times get in the way or slow them down...

...But boy do I get fed-up of the line that: "jobs are created by the private sector not by the public sector. Wealth is created by the private sector not by the public sector"...

That's just sloppy and ideological thinking. I could give list after list of ventures that have had a crucial hand from public interventions that would otherwise not exist, but, for example, through public intervention via University spinout programmes.

Here's just *one* recent example of a AIM listed private venture with it route in public sector research and knowledge transfer.

http://www.tissueregenix.com/

It takes two baby!!

Brian

I can understand where you're coming from. I believe what's needed is more "risk capital" and more support for young creative entrepreneurs to give something crazy a go. In my experience I've noticed ideas are quite easily shot down and it takes a lot of tenacity to handle that. That is not to say that ideas should not be well thought through.

Whether public or private, I believe more support in the right way is needed for startups, and unfortunately a lot of the "support" is coming from people who are not aligned with the businesses and then regulations can come in the way of building a valued business. I personally have found it a challenging task to balance moving forward in what I feel is the right direction whilst being encouraged to work on many different aspects.

There are so many different stages to creating a successful product and there are different markets that can be entered, and the support is valid at certain stages and can slow you down if it comes too soon.

As for University spinout programmes - fantastic, but please give the entrepreneurs the control they need to make it succeed. I think a lot of projects have been killed before they could even begin to think about flourishing due to Universities trying to take a chunk. I personally had a project I would have liked to have spun out into a company but avoided it and started building something else, and one reason was that hassle.

I think Universities linking up with successful entrepreneurs who can act as advisors and mentors, and support schemes doing the same would be a huge step in the right direction.

Now you're talking:

"I think Universities linking up with successful entrepreneurs who can act as advisors and mentors, and support schemes doing the same would be a huge step in the right direction"

That's exactly our approach - we've largely built all our spinout activity around this. And it does make a difference. Some other thoughts on how we should do things differently are hinted in this prezo: http://www.slideshare.net/aidanant/praxis-unico-presentation-on-kt20b
Brian