Message from Sir Tom Hunter
Entrepreneurship
The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship is one of the most important social investments made by the Hunter Foundation.
It is based upon the simple premise that education changes people's lives - their aspirations, their sense of purpose, their skill base and what they can ultimately achieve.
When coupled with a spirit of entrepreneurship, you have a powerful combination of talent and insight that is able to address both the challenges and opportunities of business and social change.
A Driven Passion
Entrepreneurship is not a neutral subject, it seeks to create and exploit change, to innovate and assemble the resources necessary to bring something of value into existence or restructure that of the past.
It has the ability to disrupt accepted ways of doing things, creating new products and services and altering the economics of established markets and industries. It lies at the heart of the ability to compete, the value and sustainability of companies and is of critical importance for the health and wellbeing of the Scottish economy and its place in the world.
More than just traditional business
Entrepreneurship is about the creation of wealth, meeting the needs of real people and real communities through efficient economic exchange. However, for the Hunter Centre there is a second imperative, one that sets the Centre and its teaching apart from traditional business education.
The Centre believes that the creation of wealth carries with it a social obligation to use a portion of that wealth for social good. The Centre provides first class business education and executive training but also addresses the challenges of social investment, new forms of economic ownership and Venture Philanthropy.
It recognises that the skills and attitudes of entrepreneurship 'the unwillingness to simply accept things as they are' - are just as relevant and important in the social policy setting of Government, in the delivery of public services and in tackling issues of poverty and exclusion as they are in traditional business settings. I trust that you will find something in the pages that follow that will fire your interest in entrepreneurship.
