Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Mapping

A social sciences entrepreneurial support mapping project

Drawing on the wealth of entrepreneurial activities and opportunities that exist across the Aspect network, this project aimed to identify social science entrepreneurship offerings with a view to mapping relevant resources for entrepreneurs and alumni.

The Project Manager worked with the Entrepreneurship Community of Practice members to identify the range of offerings available at each university. Each university’s offering was mapped, providing a gap analysis, allowing members to look across all of the Aspect universities to consider what could be shared potentially in terms of best practice and ideas.

There are four key elements to this mapping project:

·      People – entrepreneurs & start-ups, supporters, entrepreneurial academics, industry partners, networks

·      Places – co-working spaces, offices and parks, hubs, accelerators/incubators

·      Programmes – events, workshops, networking

·      Pounds – competitions, investors, awards and grants

Looking at these areas across 11 Aspect institutions, a comparison matrix is being created to identify gaps and enable universities to see how they may supplement their offerings learning from the activities collated from elsewhere.  

Each institution was then asked to put forward two case studies, identified based on their impact or role in the ecosystem, of entrepreneurs with a social science background developing a multitude of different entrepreneurial ventures. 

The intention of these in combination is to enable universities to be able to better inform their entrepreneurial networks, whether in existence or being established, of the opportunities to get involved in the social sciences entrepreneurship ecosystem, with reference to a tangible record of current activities, and an understanding of where they can add more value.

From these learnings, the project will create a guide to inform universities how to implement their own ecosystem map should they want to direct student entrepreneurs (and others) to relevant information sources. 

As a further resource, the project looked at the University of Oxford’s Entrepreneurs Uncovered Series and to created a guide on how universities could create their own.

These resources are in the process of being completed and will appear on this page soon!