Delivered in partnership with Glasgow Life, the National Library of Scotland and Santander, the new service in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library is the 12th National Network Centre modelled on the British Library’s Business & IP Centre, and the first ever to open in Scotland.
The new centre opened its doors on April 26 and will support entrepreneurs and small businesses in Glasgow to start, protect and grow their business through access to a wealth of free business and IP resources including information on patents, trademarks, designs and copyright.
The service will harness the expertise of local public and private business, including Experts in Residence, and work with regional partners such as Scottish Enterprise, Business Gateway, the Chamber of Commerce, local universities and colleges and Glasgow-based enterprises to deliver a programme of free and low-cost workshops and events for anyone thinking of starting or growing their business.
The events programme will include live streams of inspiring talks at the British Library, which in the past have included Mary Portas, ‘Queen of Shops’, Julie Deane, the British Library’s entrepreneur-in-residence and founder of the Cambridge Satchel Company, and Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter.
Recent figures show that the Business & IP Centre and the National Network helps 63 people to become entrepreneurs every single day.
The service has proved to be an accessible space for SMEs: 60 per cent of users across the National Network last year were women and 39 per cent were from a BAME background, compared with just 20 per cent and 5 per cent of business owners respectively.
An independent report found that nine out of ten companies helped by the Business & IP Centre succeed past three years, compared with only six out of ten across the UK.
Links