Saltire Foundation in Boston

 

The New Year got off to an exciting start for The Saltire Foundation as CEO Sandy Kennedy and Clive Palmer had the honour of being personally invited to the four-day Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators, at Babson College in Boston from January 8th - 12th.

Babson, the recognised global leader in entrepreneurship education, have set a goal of building an international cadre of educators who understand the importance of combining entrepreneurship theory and practice in teaching, and thus invited Sandy and Clive to join 50 other delegates from 15 countries. The symposium brought together a mixture of entrepreneurship academics and entrepreneurs to share teaching tools and discuss best practice.

"The most powerful thing from our point of view was to hear that the work of The Saltire Foundation; what we're doing on a national scale with both the Undergraduate and the Fellowship programmes, was seen as really groundbreaking and exciting." Sandy said. "We also met a lot of people who are now very engaged with the Foundation an others who would like to work with us in the future."

Babson College is The Saltire Foundation's key partner in running the Fellowship Programme and so invited Sandy and Clive to Boston to hear about what cutting edge thinking and tools are being used to inspire the next generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs. Sandy added:

"The main point that we took from the trip was that more than ever, there is a consensus that entrepreneurship is seen as a key element crucial to solving the current economic and social crisis. Entrepreneurship is really a key priority on the agendas of countries around the globe and what The Saltire Foundation is doing, within that context, is at the cutting edge and is being admired".

The symposium, rather than a one-off conference, is a continuing basis for discussion from which learning and development will grow. Both Sandy and Clive were delighted to join seven other delegates from Scotland including members of SIE, Entrepreneurial Spark, The RGU Centre for Entrepreneurship, Micro Tyco and Wildhearts in Action.