RGU expects its University Entrepreneurship Accelerator to back at least 25 projects each year in areas such as healthcare, digital and social enterprise.
Robert Gordon University (RGU) partnered philanthropic office Wood Foundation on Tuesday to launch the University Entrepreneurship Accelerator, which will invest up to £10,000 ($13,500) in projects from Aberdeen and north east Scotland.
The industry-agnostic program will be the first fully-funded, local accelerator to support RGU’s staff, students and recent alumni. It will back at least 25 projects each year, as selected by an external peer panel following a competition held each autumn.
RGU expects the program to attract proposals in areas such as technology, food and drink, sustainability, creative industries, healthcare, engineering, social enterprise and digital solutions. Where there is potential, RGU will ask students and staff to consider turning their term papers or research findings into a proposal.
University Entrepreneurship Accelerator will operate alongside its recently-launched Innovation Skills program, which offers extracurricular courses for students in areas such as commercialisation, ideation, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.
Startup teams must feature at least one RGU student on an undergraduate, graduate and doctoral program, or else a staff member and alumnus who graduated within three years of September 2018. The remaining entrepreneurs may come from other institutions in the region.
The budget will also fund the creation of an RGU Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group to oversee both University Entrepreneurship Accelerator and Innovation Skills. RGU plans to unveil additional initiatives to build the university’s capacity in skills, innovation, entrepreneurship and employability in the coming months.
Gordon McConnell, vice-president of commercial and regional innovation at RGU, who modelled the accelerator on similar schemes in Ireland, the US and Saudi Arabia, said: “Entrepreneurship is now a career choice for many graduates, and here at RGU students will get the opportunity to try to build and grow their business before they even leave the university.”
