Partners


John AndersonJohn Anderson - CEO, Entrepreneurial Exchange
 
A well known specialist in entrepreneurship and new venture creation in Scotland, John brings considerable experience of emerging and high growth companies to his role as Chief Executive of The Entrepreneurial Exchange.

A founder member of The Entrepreneurial Exchange, John was a shareholding director of a young venture backed technology company engaged in the design, manufacture and distribution of laboratory equipment.  He co-founded a company that provided pre-hospital emergency care and healthcare industry training and also a new media business.  As an adviser in professional practice he worked with many of Scotland’s most exciting growth companies after returning to Scotland from Chicago in 1989. 
 
An experienced non-executive director, he is a regular contributor to the media on issues facing emerging and high growth companies and was instrumental in setting up the Scottish Enterprise "Local Heroes" project, based in part on his own MBA thesis "Local Heroes - Scotland's Entrepreneurial Role Models".

John is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde.  He is a founding GlobalScot member and is a PSYBT Growth Fund panel member, director of Scottish Enterprise Tayside (audit committee chairman) and a director of Stirling University Innovation Park.  John is Chairman of the Tayside and Fife regional committee of the Game Conservancy Trust.
Hugh Ross, OBE
 
Hugh has over 40 years experience of working in Government, mainly with industry and academia in the R&TD field. Following retirement from the Civil Service in May 2007, he set up his own consultancy firm, Hugh Ross Consultants, to assist small firms and universities with their commercialisation activities.
His earlier responsibilities in Government included placing and managing Government contracts with aerospace suppliers and contractors and promoting Government technical advisory services and EU and national R&TD Schemes for industry. He has also edited various technology journals, managed the Scottish element of the EU STRIDE Programme and been Chairman of the EU funded SME Initiative Operational Programme for Lowland Scotland Programme Management Committee.

Hugh also has extensive knowledge of sales and marketing, having spent the best part of a decade advising and assisting firms on all aspects of their export activities and acting as UK Sales Manager for a Government organisation that manufactured and sold a wide range of industrial and consumer products.

He became Head –Innovation Grants in the Scottish Executive Enterprise Transport & Lifelong Learning Department in January 1991 and continued in this position for some 16 years until his retirement. During this period he dealt with policy issues relating to industrial R&D support and technology transfer in Scotland and had overall responsibility for administering and promoting the SMART:SCOTLAND, SPUR and SPURPlus industrial R&D support schemes.

In addition to chairing the SMART:SCOTLAND Judging Panel, Hugh was a member of the Stakeholders Panel for Scottish Enterprise’s Proof of Concept Fund, Glasgow University’s Knowledge Transfer Strategy Group, and a former member of the Core Services Working Group for the Business Gateway Network, the Business Services Steering Group for the Glasgow Science Centre, and the Smart Northern Ireland Judging Panel.

He is a non-executive Director of Stirling University Innovation Park Ltd and Targeting Innovation Ltd and a former Director of LINC Scotland –a nationwide business introduction service between private investors and businesses seeking growth and start-up capital. 

He was awarded an OBE in 2002 and appointed an Honorary Fellow of Heriot Watt University in 2007.