Carnegie Internet Futures Initiative Supports Next Generation of Entrepreneurs

This week (23 November) the UK Government announced that it would soon set out the next steps to encourage young British people with ideas to become entrepreneurs with profitable products and to strive for the USA levels of business creation. However with unemployment amongst UK youngsters expecting to top one million and with Fife’s new business start ups still lagging behind the Scottish average the question is where can our young people turn for support and investment to turn their ideas into reality? At the annual ‘George Lauder’ Lecture on 26 November, the college announced a major initiative to tackle head on some of these issues, with guests introduced to bold new plans for what is believed to be Scotland’s first ‘virtual incubator’ for internet-related businesses, Carnegie Internet Futures (CiF) (www.carnegieifutures.com). Guest speaker for the evening, Scottish-based businessman Alex Clyne, the college’s first entrepreneur-in-residence (www.carnegiecollege.ac.uk/eir) with a proven background in internet entrepreneurship, outlined the plans for the project which has been created with the aim of encouraging and supporting the next generation of new business start-ups on the internet and to tackle head-on Fife’s low business birthrate. Mr Clyne explained, “CiF is designed to be an online hothouse to cultivate budding entrepreneurs, through an open-source incubator that will provide entrepreneurs with the opportunity to bring their internet ideas to life.” Clyne defined the primary aim of CiF as 'to identify, promote and support early-stage, internet-related businesses and ideas, wherever they are based'. He went on "Our goal is to create businesses and jobs and provide every young person and individual in Scotland with the chance to become an internet entrepreneur. Some of the biggest business success stories on the web started as someone’s bright idea. If budding entrepreneurs think they have the next BIG internet idea, we can support them to take it to the next stage and to find the cash to launch it. “We know there are great ideas out there, but the potential creators of the next generation of internet businesses can struggle to get them to the investor-ready stage. We are here to help make that happen. And to kick start Carnegie Internet Futures and to kick start Carnegie Internet Futures, we are putting up a competition prize of up to £2,000 of investment support to help each of the five winners with the best ideas to make their internet business dreams come true. “CiF will reach the broadest possible audience to maximise chances of finding the best ideas. It makes no difference if it’s a hairdresser or a high-tech wizard who wants to use the web as a way of expanding business opportunities, as long as there is a real business opportunity in the making." Mr Clyne concluded “CiF will create links with suitable partner organisations - corporations, public-body funders, and universities. Early-stage discussions have been very encouraging, with a number of corporations and institutions both within Scotland and USA, have expressed their interest. Partnership support has been received from Robert Gordon’s University and negotiations are at advanced stages with other universities and public bodies, including Fife Council, the Scottish Funding and Scottish Enterprise as well as leading educational institutes in the US.” The man proposed to initially head up CiF is Dr Ian Heywood, an ideas coach, with a passion about how new technology can support learning and business development. Check out the CiF website (carnegieifutures.com) to find out more. posted 27 November 2009