Who is running the course?

Thomas McCallum is an ambitious entrepreneur from the Highlands & Islands region who is proving to be a driving force behind entrepreneur-led stimulation of innovation, ambition, B2B networking and business growth in the region.

Dr McCallum is the founder and managing director of Moray based Gulfstream Software, a fast growing technology company with international ambition and potential, with recently opened offices in Edinburgh and Paris, and was awarded the Innovation Award at the Fusion Annual Conference in 2008.

After attending the Entrepreneurs Immersion Programme (EIP) course run by HIE and FUSION in September 2008, Dr McCallum was one of six individuals who won a place at the prestigious Entrepreneur Development Programme (EDP) at MIT in January 2009 and since his return has continued to be an entrepreneurship champion in the region, encouraging other small businesses to engage in HIE-led entrepreneurship development activities both in partnership with MIT and other partners such as FUSION, HI-Links, the Intellectual Assets Centre and the IoD.

Dr McCallum now hopes to lead the continuation of the EIP course in the Highlands & Islands to stimulate other businesses to have global ambition and growth potential. He has shown impressive ambition and leadership qualities and has demonstrated capability to lead and deliver on this project.

Who will be teaching the course?
The course learning content will be delivered by an experienced team of entrepreneurs and business experts led by Bill Bryan who are the same team who successfully delivered the EIP 2008 course. Each team member is an expert in the specific fields of:

• Entrepreneurship
• Marketing and Intellectual Property (IP)
• Sales and Marketing
• Raising Finance for Investment
• Leadership and Human Resources

The team consists of the following individuals:

Bill Bryan is a Chartered Engineer, experienced entrepreneur and current Entrepreneur In Residence of the University of the HIgghlands & Islands (UHI).

Bill’s career has encompassed working for large technology organisations (UK Atomic Energy, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard), founding three high technology SMEs and, for the last 17 years, providing consultancy services to technology based SMEs in the UK and Central Eastern Europe. Bill specialises in technology commercialisation, new company formation and SME business development.

His assignments include:

• adviser to 40 Aberdeen Offshore Technology Park companies
• creation of the commercialisation strategy for a Scottish HEI
• technology commercialisation for the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council
• development of a diversification strategy for the services division of UKAEA Dounreay
• implementation of a diversification strategy for oil & gas suppliers
• board and management review of Europe’s largest pelagic fish processor
• development and delivery of enterprise development and skills transfer training programmes to organisations such as BAe Systems, Rolls Royce and Scottish Enterprise.

Donal O’Herlihy is a Chartered Engineer (C.Eng., Eur.Ing) with a post graduate technical qualification from Cranfield University and an MBA from Strathclyde University.

Donal led a trans-national technology transfer project between Scotland and the US whilst working for Scottish Enterprise, a Strategy for Manufacturing and was Project Manager of SE’s first formal strategy development process. In his current role as Managing Director of his successful consulancy business O’Herlihy & Co.

Donal has specialised in business development, technology and innovation assignments over the past 14 years. These assignments include the delivery of seminars for SMEs both on Creative Product Development and on Intellectual Property and product protection.

Alister Minty was previously a founding director of IndigoVision Ltd., which successfully IPO’d in August 2000. In his roles of VP Sales & Marketing, he led the team that successfully licensed Indigo’s networked video technology to OEMs in Japan, USA & Europe.

Previously he was Business Group Manager at VLSI Vision Ltd., the CMOS camera manufacturer led by Peter Denyer which spun out of University of Edinburgh in 1992, and before that an Engineering Project Manager at Racal. After this dynamic and varied career, Alister now runs an independent consultancy business providing strategic sales & marketing services, business planning and mentoring to high-technology SMEs & start-up companies. He is currently on the board of two technology start-up companies.

Angus Hay is founding Director of DC Consulting and jointly heads up the corporate finance division. Angus has a strong knowledge and significant experience of the Private Equity investment market, Scottish Co-Investment partners and Independent Venture Capitalists network.

To date, Angus has been the lead advisor for a number of co-investment equity transactions and is instrumental in advising early stage and start-up companies on their strategy and business, thereby ensuring their ‘investor ready’ status. Angus is experienced in developing MBO/MBI propositions, particularly with leveraging debt equity funding.

Peter Rogan established Future Positive Consulting Limited in 2002. Although he initially trained as an electronics engineer in the early ‘80s, Peter developed his career in training and HR.

The firm’s flagship programmes include Growth Through People (GTP), Management For Growth (MFG) and Leadership For Growth (LFG). The company’s Management Development Programme, which helps people from technical backgrounds learn practical and effective management skills, won a Scottish Training Award in partnership with Aptuit. In 2006, while continuing to build Future Positive, Peter started an e-business providing 360 degree performance reviews and other powerful on-line business benchmarking tools.

This team offers many year’s multidisciplinary experience, from which the programme’s attendees can draw. Individual team members are regularly in contact with others in Scottish business development and beyond, including the Enterprise Network, investors and professional services. Where appropriate, they are able to provide post-workshop guidance and networking assistance to attendees.