Enterprise

What better for the local economy than a vibrant enterprise culture embraced by young people, the forever young, and industry practitioners?

Perthshire region has the potential to position itself as a major area of creativity, innovation and enterprise. To do so effectively and in a sustainable way we will require much stronger, collaborative relationships between various industry sectors, individual companies and training providers.

The result of such effective collaboration is a highly skilled, motivated and enterprising workforce delivering competitive products and services at home and abroad.

The cross fertilisation of ideas and experience is the key to this collaboration. It is no accident that the great entrepreneurs of this country are consistent and practiced networkers, making it their business to meet with like-minded people at every possible opportunity.

Colleges can play an important role in this cross fertilization – for their own students by inspiring and motivating them to have business ideas and the confidence to make them work; by giving them the networking opportunties to develop their thinking; by organising work experience to help them put their ideas into context; by supporting the planning and implementation of those ideas and of course by providing skills and qualification based training which leads them to achieve their goals.

Industry collaboration with colleges can mean a real opportunity for knowledge transfer to mutual benefit. The new workforce will be better equipped to understand and contribute to the competitive world of industry. The encouragement and support of young people and the forever young! to be enterprising will ultimately enliven the economy, generating new customers for all.

Developing these cross-sector networks—capable of implementing and evaluating innovation and collaborative enterprise approaches—will offer a practical and sustainable solution to growing our part of the Scottish economy.