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Jim Duffy

Jim Duffy16 posts

Jim Duffy is a Scottish businessman. He is the Chief Executive Optimist at Entrepreneurial Spark, a startup business accelerator that started in Glasgow, and is now in multiple cities across the UK and has launched in India. Duffy was a police officer for many years, before starting his own businesses. After he sold those he started Entrepreneurial Spark, with the aim to help ease the startup process.

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23 Jan, 2016

TEDxUWE talk – The Leadership Lens

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Duffy speaks at TEDxUWE, an independently organized TED event, at the University of West England, in Bristol. He talks about “the leadership lens”, using Sir Alex Ferguson as an example.

If you’re going to lead you need three things: a vision and a goal, an outcome, and you need it to be attractive to people. My vision and goal is to inspire and enable positive social change through the action of entrepreneuring, to make the UK the most entrepreneurial country in the world. My outcome is better enabled entrepreneurs, who are backable, credible, and investable. I attract people to it by having impact and actually doing what I say. More entrepreneurs, more wealth, more jobs, and more people get on board.

The leadership lens | Jim Duffy | TEDxUWE

12 Jun, 2015

TED Glasgow talk

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Duffy speaks at TED Glasgow on what stops people from living their dreams, concentrating on brain chemistry, upbringing, education and media.

The way to recombobulate is…to think and act like an entrepreneur. Not to start a business. You have to think and act like an entrepreneur in everything you do in life. Entrepreneurs all all about the go-do. Not can-do, not “must-do, not to-do. Two verbs. Bang, bang. They are all about outcomes. Engineering stuff to happen. Action. They have to deal with volatility, uncertainty, chaos, complexity, ambiguity, every day of their lives. They don’t clock on at nine ‘o’clock and finish at five. They are always on. That means they have to deal with risk, but they are not risk takers. They are cognitively comfortable with the notion of risk, a big difference. They build up a tolerance to risk. But that moves them outside their comfort zone.

Our brains – what stops us from living our dreams? | Jim Duffy | TEDxGlasgow

7 Mar, 2012

GCU talk

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Duffy gives an opening address to GCU students about Entrepreneurial Spark.

We are delighted to have GCU as our academic ambassador as the university is grounded in what we call positive realism. We have a great relationship with Principal and Vice Chancellor Pamela Gillies, who is one of the most progressive academic leaders in Europe. GCU students will benefit from sharing out entrepreneurial thinking and from inputs within the university campus.