Interview: Scottish Business Network chairman Russell Dalgleish on deploying the diaspora

Russell Dalgleish has travelled across the Atlantic many a time in his role as chairman of Scottish Business Network (SBN), a professional non-profit organisation that aims to unite Scotland’s extensive diaspora.

But he says one sight was particularly memorable – turning a corner in Manhattan and being greeted with the dazzling spectacle of the New York City Tartan Day Parade, powerfully heading literally and metaphorically through the streets paved with an "if I can make it there I'll make it anywhere” reputation. “It's a very humbling experience seeing it,” Dalgleish says of the event. "And I just wish we could get more education for people in Scotland about how the world thinks about us.”

The US is seen as having major potential for Scotland by SBN, which Dalgleish set up in 2016 with Christine Esson (whose current roles include Women’s Enterprise Scotland ambassador), after perceiving a gap in the market for uniting Scots in London. The Linlithgow-based venture started out with an event attended by a dozen people, with key early support from Martin Gilbert, then head of what was then known as Aberdeen Asset Management.

SBN is now engaging with more than 11,000 people internationally that have Scottish connections, up from about 7,000 in 2018, and it now has ambassadors across all four corners of the globe including Sao Paolo, Singapore, Sydney, and several locations in the US.

Dalgleish points out that when SBN undertook a survey in 2020 on perceptions of the Scottish business diaspora, “we were really surprised that the enormous response we got from the US”. That came amid a higher-than-expected response overall (“we thought if we could get 200 people from 20 countries to respond that would be an amazing achievement – and we ended up getting 1,100 from 73 countries”).

He adds: “My personal experience has been there's huge desire to engage from the US, more than anywhere else that I've come across... I think it’s the biggest opportunity.” Reinforcing this is the Scottish Government having found that the country was Scotland’s top destination for goods exports in 2022 (excluding oil and gas), having increased by a fifth to £3.7 billion year on year, and the largest value increase for any destination over the period.

Meanwhile, the UK Government has been signing trade agreements with some of the 50 states, with SBN running events on the back of these, with North Carolina a case in point. Dalgleish ended up talking to Mike McIntyre, now a key player in fostering economic prosperity in the state, a former Congressman who originally introduced the bill to create Tartan Day, who "couldn't be more helpful”. Consequently, efforts have been made to discuss and bridge what’s happening with govtech and artificial intelligence in Scotland and the work of, say, Raleigh’s Research Triangle Park, the largest research park in North America.

The States also shows what SBN can bring to the table more broadly, with Dalgleish saying: “We're looking all the time to try to see, this diaspora that we’ve built, how can we connect it into Scotland? How can we help everybody who's trying to do something do it faster? And when you've got connections with something like 70 of the top 100 tech firms in the US, that's pretty powerful. We may not have [exactly] the right connection for you, but we'll know someone senior who can help – they’ll take the call. It’s just amazing the people we have around the world just cannot give enough to help Scotland.”

'it’s just amazing the people we have around the world just cannot give enough to help Scotland,' says the SBN chairman. Picture: contributed.

The businessman, who also runs business consultancy Exolta Partners, adds that Scotland is recognised globally as an innovative culture, but less so as an entrepreneurial one. “What we underestimate, though, is this desire by Scots around the world to find ways to remain connected. There's a great book written by Professor Pittock, from Glasgow University, about how the Scots have used this ability to develop networks and relationships globally over the last couple of hundred years, to our benefit, because it's natural to us. We don't feel forced to do it – we almost feel compelled to do it."

And as further evidence of Scotland understanding itself better from afar, Dalgleish recounts how during a visit to Korea a few months ago, local companies told him that Scotland was “the number one location for agritech” – agriculture technology. Firms operating in this field north of the Border include Glasgow-based Solasta Bio, which earlier this year secured funding to scale its eco-friendly pesticides.

Asia is also a big focus for SBN, with visits scheduled to Singapore and Hong Kong plus Korea, with the aim of identifying opportunities for Scotland and new collaborative partners, while the organisation has agreed a partnership with the Asia Scotland Institute, for example. Asian expansion by Scottish firms includes the news that Scotch Malt Whisky Society owner The Artisanal Spirits Company has launched a new subsidiary in Taiwan, part of its strategic expansion in the continent.

Other SBN priorities include the forthcoming launch of its own online platform – like a LinkedIn for businesspeople with Scottish connections around the globe, aiming to have a network of tens of thousands.

Dalgleish is also now a dealmaker for Scotland as part of the UK’s state-backed Global Entrepreneur Programme, and he is tasked with identifying “world-class, international technology entrepreneurs with the drive and ambition to accelerate the growth of their business from a new base in Scotland” – with several Scottish tech firms this year named among the fastest-growing in the north of the UK.

Meanwhile, the SBN chairman continues to find pockets of Scotland everywhere, telling of a visit to Los Angeleswhenan SBN contact was driving him down to the coast. “He suddenly said, ‘oh, we got to take a detour’. He drove very slowly along a street and said, ‘that's where I buy my Irn-Bru’. It just makes you realise that people want that connection with back home.”