Becoming entrepreneurial isn’t just about generating income. It’s about smarter commissioning and better partnership working. It’s about how we perceive problems and find solutions. In a nutshell, it’s about our outlook and our mind-set.

Talking to the Council of the Future Board earlier this month (October), Carl Bullough, Senior Responsible Owner of the Entrepreneurial Services Workstream, emphasised the need to take the bull by the horns, be risk aware and ensure good ideas are harnessed.

He said: “There are lots of people in the Council with good ideas. We need to collect them, assess if they are feasible and ensure they don’t get stuck, and that is part of my role. I have to ensure this workstream finds £3.4m of savings by 2024. I also have to ensure we look beyond the next five years and see where opportunity may lie.

“A lot of projects in this workstream look to be business as usual. What we have to ask ourselves is - how we can widen there scope to ensure we start doing things differently? To do that, we need to investigate ideas to see what is possible. For instance, should Food for Falkirk do a piece of work to see if a central production kitchen is feasible and workable? If it isn’t we take that idea off the table but if it is, what opportunities does that bring?

“Of course we need to decide if something is legal and fair, and I understand concerns about competing with local businesses but, the flip side is the more income we bring into the council the fewer jobs need to go. It’s about managing those risks and looking at market demand.”

Carl went on to explain that the Entrepreneurial Spark Sprint would provide the groundwork needed to embed a more entrepreneurial mind-set across the Council.

“We have 25 people – from managers to CANs - who either volunteered or were asked to join the Sprint looking to enhance their ability to challenge and question. What this training will provide are the tools needed to embed a growth mind-set and the behaviours of an entrepreneur. People can be very fixed in what they do and how they do it. The idea of the Sprint is to get people to think in a different way and then pass that underlying philosophy on.”