Entrepreneurs make the leap from battlefield to business


Our research on military entrepreneurship is featured in The Times.

With the Ministry of Defence under pressure to make cuts, some believe that start-ups established by service leavers can play a key role in defence innovation. Matt Smith, director of the Centre for Entrepreneurs, is one: “There are good examples of ex-forces entrepreneurs in all sectors — Gorkana and Go Ape, for example, are all quite removed from the defence sector — but defence sector businesses are using new technologies and therefore are more likely to achieve high growth and to create more tax revenue.”

The Centre for Entrepreneurs, a think tank, sets out five ways that the the armed forces can support and embrace service leavers in defence innovation, including boot camps, accelerators, entrepreneurship hubs and innovation labs. It calls for the expansion of jhub, a small, existing programme supported by the Ministry of Defence that is experimenting with speeding up how the armed forces work with technology companies.

Read the full article here