"Passion drives success."

"Passion drives success."

An overused platitude? Perhaps. But seldom before have I witnessed such truth in that statement than at Thursday's showcase finale event for the Highlands & Islands Pathfinder Accelerator Programme - one of the commercial accelerators that I have been proud to be the Director of for the past 3 years. It is a programme that has nurtured a record 156 entrepreneurs from the Highlands & Islands to stress-test and commercialise new ventures.

The event featured a "Fireside Chat" where I posed some questions and discussion points to a diverse group of 6 Highland-based entrepreneurs - all alumni of the programme. We discussed the beginnings of their entrepreneurial journey, the challenges and opportunities they face right now, and their hopes for the future of their business and the region.

If passion does drive success, then who could deny the likelihood of Hannah Williams delivering her vision to ensure that all non-verbal children gain access to the life-changing AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) technology that she has witnessed, with her support, transform their capability to communicate - unlocking their most significant barrier to the world of opportunities taken for granted by most.

When asked about her hopes for the future Hannah's normally bubbly tone flipped to something you only hear from people advocating against extreme injustice when she described the woeful absence of provision of the right tools for non-verbal children and their families. All she needs, afterall, is an old iPad to change a family's difficult circumstances for the better. Well, it worked, because by the end of the evening one audience member pledged a bunch of these to her to help her on her journey.

All too often "vision" (in the form of "vision statements") are nothing more than bland box-ticking entities used by large companies to fill the corresponding page on their website. But when it flows out of the mouth of a founder entrepreneur with enough force of passion to infect an audience to step-up and help them for free - who could deny the power it can have when it actually means something - both to the entrepreneur themselves and to wider society.

That trend continued. We heard from Natalie Sutherland who turned her back on a lucrative corporate pharmaceutical career in London to return home to the Highlands and lay the foundations of a business which utilises her unique combination of skills and technologies to support charities to raise the funds they need, empowering them to deliver more and more social impact - hence her business's name: "Income for Impact".

You could hear a collective groan rippling across the room full of entrepreneurs when Natalie described a pivotal moment when her corporate masters wanted her to take up the opportunity to join the programme they called "Corporate Athlete".

It's at this point you begin to get a sense of what this mysterious connective tissue is that binds together all these seemingly different people who hail from wildly different universes. From scientists to farmers, technologists to clinicians, lawyers to marketeers. They all discussed their unwillingness to accept the status-quo when it's inefficacy stares them in the face. They shared their frustration with the slow-ness of these problems being rectified due to fixed-mindsets and bureaucracy.

I can well imagine them all to have been quite difficult employees (and - yes - I do include myself in that category!). Thorns in the side of their respective organisations while they incessantly call-out the elephant in the room without any fear of reproach.

Another point that got countless heads nodding was raised by Grant Humphries - a well published PhD ecologist who left the academic world to establish his company that applies A.I., machine learning and data science to ornithological studies. He described the prevailing culture that when your occupation delivers something positive to the world - it is expected that the warm fuzzy feeling that gives you should be reward enough. That shifting to a profit-making model is somehow believed to be at odds with one's ability to deliver any form of environmental or social benefit.

Yet in virtually every case we were faced with during this discussion, the exact opposite was true. Beyond those already mentioned were Stefan Quarry - whose geodome business helps homeowners realise Stefan’s dream - that everyone should grow their own food again, and Dr Katharine Jones , a practicing medical doctor who couldn't ignore the clinical data in support of nature's ability to impact an individual’s mental wellbeing - and so was born her outdoor wellbeing retreat business to help those suffering from professional burnout.

These entrepreneurs are utilising the profit from a commercial business model as a form of oxygen to supercharge their ability to deliver the social or environmental impact that they are so passionate about with a nimbleness and pace that the institutions they left behind were simply unable to achieve.

One final discussion point looked into the prevalence of isolation in the Highland region. No-one knows isolation more than Grant who spends half of his life in Antarctica with only the penguins for company - so a return home to Fort Augustus must feel like visiting Oxford Street - but for the rest, there was a degree of recognition. Being a founder entrepreneur can be a lonely place regardless of geography, so a remote life can exacerbate that truth - isolating oneself from customers, potential new employees, suppliers and more. However, I was pleased to hear that, on balance, post-COVID adoption of technology was swinging this pendulum the other way. Graeme Rose in the audience raised his hand to counter isolation with the infinite connections now open to him anywhere in the world. Hannah echoed that sentiment noting that, for the first time, she can live in this picturesque part of the world that keeps her mind happy and makes her heart sing whilst accessing UK-wide (potentially worldwide) opportunities without ever having to leave.

The most experienced voice on the stage was that of Ewan MacGregor (no - the other one!) now on his 3rd business Helica Projects . His journey began with an attraction to the autonomy and flexibility he could have over his family life to counter the rigidity of his partner's working hours but has grown to become the successful entity it is today. His advice to the earlier stage entrepreneurs in the room could be summarised as "be prepared to say yes more often", because you just never know what could become of capitalising on new paths or opportunities that you could never have conceived in any formal business plan.

The showcase event culminated with an award ceremony for the "Pitching Contest" - the final of which took place on-stage earlier in the evening. The winner was Sacha Wright whose technology company Practest Global seeks to revolutionise GP/patient communication in surgeries across the UK. Hot on her heels was Aleksandra Czech-Seklecka of VanFill Ltd , Zo? Russell of Rethink Carbon , Aaron Ross of Roslin Distillers Ltd , Andy Hall of 4c Engineering and Calum Kirkness of Polycroo Tunnels - all of whom received an extensive list of finalist prizes, many of which were also donated by programme alumni.

Winner Sacha Wright (can we now call her the Queen of Pathfinder?) embodies a particular countertrend statistic from our tenure delivering Pathfinder that we are particularly proud of. Over 50% of the 156 individuals that have embarked on the programme are female entrepreneurs - a marked contrast to some of the grim findings published last year in the Pathways Report commissioned by the Scottish Government which found that only 1 in 5 Scottish Entrepreneurs are women and receive only 2% of the available institutional investment capital.

So, for me it’s au revoir to the Highlands for now. It’s been a privilege to be able to support such a uniquely diverse collection of fantastic businesses and fantastic people and it has been wonderful to hear such an enviable passion about collectively building opportunities in the wonderful place they call home.

I recounted a story during last week’s event of one of my very first conversations when we began this project where I was asked where in the Highlands I was from. When I broke the news that I actually lived in the Central Belt I got a sympathetic reply: “Aww man - I’m so sorry to hear that!” 3 years on – I finally understand what he meant!

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For the event, thanks to the following alumni who donated prizes:

Natalie Gilray – Lighten the Load

Lindsay Ferries BA (Hons) FCIPD LLM – Arthur & Carmichael LLP

Dr Katharine Jones - Wild-Ness Spa & Retreat Ltd

Caroline Kelly - The Lovat, Loch Ness

To Stuart Black and Alistair Dodds CBE of HIE for their speaking contributions. To the pitch panel judges: Anna Salgado , Elizabeth Pirrie and Stuart Black

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For the past 3 years - thanks to the whole team at Skillfluence , Alison Gray , Rachel Clark , Zachary Sorrells , Gillian McGill , Victoria McCallum for forensic project management skills, subject matter experts/coaches Julia Shalet and Evelyn Simpson , investment coaches from Investing Women Angels , and support from the NIH and HIE Teams in particular: Catriona Ramsay , Claire Munro , Andrea McColl , April Conroy , Jenny Welch

And to the many many more that have supported the programme as partners, stakeholders, roundtable speakers, Dragons Den judges and more!