Shortlist for Entrepreneur of the Year awards unveiled

Entrepreneurial Scotland has today announced the finalists of its prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Awards for 2017.

The awards honour those individuals who have excelled in entrepreneurial leadership over the past 12 months and celebrate Scotland’s most exciting entrepreneurial talent.

This year’s finalists (in alphabetical order) are:

Entrepreneur of the Year

Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the Year

Rising Star Entrepreneur of the Year

This year Barclays will be backing, ‘Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the Year’ (previously Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year).

This award will recognise the achievements of leaders who are building a scale-up organisation or enterprise with outstanding potential.

Previous winners of the emerging award include Lucinda Bruce Gardyne, Genius Gluten Free (2005), and Mike Welch OBE, Blackcircles (2014).

This reinforces Barclays’ new proposition, ‘Barclays High Growth and Entrepreneurs’, launched in 2015 in direct response to Scotland’s scale up gap, with the aim of helping businesses move on to a global stage.

Nominees were assessed by Entrepreneurial Scotland, Deloitte and Barclays, with shortlisted candidates put forward to the second stageof the rigorous judging process. Successful nominees then had a company visit to evaluate the financial performance of their business and to assess key strategies including: planning, competitive advantage, people and leadership – all essential components for running successful entrepreneurial companies.

The finalists for each category were then interviewed by the winners of the 2016 awards – Entrepreneur of the Year, Jimmy Milne CBE of Balmoral Group, and Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year, Chris Gauld of Spark Energy, alongside Sandy Kennedy of Entrepreneurial Scotland, Richard Slater of Deloitte in Scotland, Stuart Brown of Barclays, Colette Grant of Grant Property and Ian McConnell of The Herald newspaper.

The new award category for 2017 – the Rising Star Entrepreneur of the Year – was introduced to recognise the collective impact of theentrepreneurial ecosystem in supporting emerging entrepreneurial talent. The award recognises the individual who has demonstrated a truly entrepreneurial mindset and considerable potential to drive growth and/or change. Nominations came from organisations that include Converge Challenge, Scottish Edge, Future X and Business Gateway.

Sandy Kennedy, Chief Executive of Entrepreneurial Scotland, said: “For Scotland to unlock its undoubted potential, we need leaders with the entrepreneurial mindset, grit and creativity to come to the fore.The ES Awards are a celebration of the breadth of entrepreneurial leadership on show in Scotland in 2017 from tech and life sciences to hospitality and airports, across the private and the public sectors, organisations large and small.

“Each of the finalists has driven outstanding performance in 2017. They have been through a multi stage, rigorous judging process and been grilled by previous winners Chris Gauld and Jimmy Milne CBE and our partners Deloitte and Barclays. Every one of them has impressed us with their talent, determination and the sheer hard work that is required to lead an entrepreneurial organisation.

“The 2017 Awards are more than just a celebration of the finalists, they fuel our own ambitions, they encourage us to do better, to work harder and push towards an entrepreneurial culture. That is what will make Scotland the most entrepreneurial society in the world. We look forward to celebrating all the finalists on November 30th.”

The winners will be announced at Entrepreneurial Scotland’s Celebration Dinner at SWG3 in Glasgow on St Andrew’s Day, Thursday, 30 November 2017. Bookings can be made online at: www.entrepreneurialscotland.com/about/awards