Digital Shoots: Growing Women's Ideas in Care
Project impact
Empowering women across Scotland to transform ideas into innovations that improve health, care and wellbeing.
Building confidence, skills and connections to create a more inclusive and accessible health and care innovation ecosystem.
Digital Shoots is a pioneering programme that helps women build the confidence, skills and networks needed to explore innovation in health and social care. Through accessible learning, mentoring and peer support, participants can develop ideas, start projects and discover how digital technologies and innovation can be used to improve services, support communities and create positive change.
Digital Shoots is an innovative entrepreneurship and skills programme designed to help women explore, develop and progress ideas relating to digital technologies and innovation that could improve health, care and wellbeing in their communities. The programme focuses particularly on women working in health and social care, unpaid carers, community volunteers, migrant women and others who may not typically engage with mainstream business support or entrepreneurship programmes. Delivered across Scotland, Digital Shoots combines introductory innovation learning, intensive bootcamp support, mentoring, peer networking and the co-creation of a new tool called the Innovation Compass. The programme aims to help participants build confidence, develop innovation skills and better understand how ideas can progress into projects, services, social enterprises or businesses. The Innovation Compass will be developed alongside participants and will provide a practical framework to help innovators assess their readiness, identify appropriate next steps and navigate Scotland's innovation support landscape.
Summary
The Digital Shoots project aims to create lasting benefits for individuals, communities and Scotland's wider innovation ecosystem. Through the programme, participants will gain the confidence, skills and connections needed to explore new opportunities and progress innovative ideas. The project will also strengthen local innovation networks by connecting women from diverse backgrounds with mentors, support organisations and innovation partners across Scotland. A key legacy of the project will be the development of the Innovation Compass. By establishing a shared approach to assessing innovation readiness, the tool has the potential to simplify navigation across Scotland's entrepreneurial support landscape, helping innovators access the right support at the right time while creating a common language for founders, incubators, funders and public agencies.
Impact & value
Progress to date
Next steps
Partners
