early stage. At the same time, we also wanted to engender a place-based perspective of entrepreneurship to ensure that proposed solutions were cognisant of the local socio-economic environment and would provide clear environmental, social and economic value for local communities. To develop a place-based approach to entrepreneurship, we worked with our partners to co-design and co-develop an approach to building entrepreneurial capacity that would enable teams of scientists at each institution to better understand how different scientific solutions might work within specific community, cultural and social contexts. This would allow scientists to build on the strengths of their local regions, draw on local resources, skills, and expertise, and to think about ways they might engage wider stakeholders to ensure scientific and engineering solutions to circular water challenges were driven by local and regional needs. Working with a project team that included representatives from our partner institutions and across different disciplines, we together designed and developed a place-based toolkit for stimulating sustainable entrepreneurial thinking amongst scientists. The project team also worked closely with our partner universities leadership teams to ensure the initiative had high level support and backing. The toolkit, based around a series of workshops, stimulates entrepreneurial thinking through engaging scientists in exploring what entrepreneurial thinking means for them, their institutions, and their disciplines. Inspiring local examples of entrepreneurial thinking are used to highlight a variety of forms of entrepreneurial thinking and different kinds of impact that can be created by researchers and scientists. It then brings together teams of scientists to think creatively about how they might create longer-term impact from their research projects, how they might engage other stakeholders in those projects, and how they might think more entrepreneurially and work more collaboratively to develop solutions that address key local, regional and global challenges. The team have worked with colleagues from partner institutions to provide training and guidance in using the toolkit, and in exploring ways the toolkit can be further tailored to different contexts and participant groups. So far, the project has delivered more than 20 entrepreneurial capacity workshops to more than 400 delegates. The toolkit is being further rolled out by partner institutions across subSaharan Africa. More recently, through support from the British Council, the work has been extended to co-designing and codeveloping a toolkit for delivering entrepreneurial capacity building to both undergraduate and postgraduate science students. The initial design of the toolkit has been delivered to students in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria and further developments and rollouts are planned. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 21 Dr Joanne Larty is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, and was RECIRCULATE work package lead for Entrepreneurship and Innovation between 2018 and 2022. She is the academic lead on a further British Council funded project, Innovation for African Universities, from 2021-2022. The RECIRCULATE project was a £7M project funded by the UK government’s Global Challenges Research Fund, through UK Research and Innovation, working closely with businesses, research organisations and communities in Africa on eco-innovations for the circular water economy. , Innovation for African Universities (IAU) is part of the British Council’s Going Global Partnerships programme, which aims to foster the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within universities and facilitate the development of skills required to build industries, companies, products and services. The project is designed to support the development of Africa – UK University Partnerships that build institutional capacity for HE engagement in entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems in selected African countries. j.larty@lancaster.ac.uk
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