Exclusive:‘Trophy sites’ and a proper story - that’s how to innovate Scotland

Throughout history, Scotland has been at the forefront of innovation in law, philosophy, science and technology. Now at risk of falling behind global competitors, what does the country need to thrive economically?

Senior figures from the public and private sectors took part in the Scotsman Leaders Forum, a roundtable event hosted in partnership with Turner & Townsend, to consider the challenges Scottish local authorities face on issues including economic development, housing and infrastructure.

In this, the third part of our series, the leaders reveal why the marriage of academia and investment is essential for economic success.

Susanne Miller, Glasgow City Council chief executive

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Glasgow and Strathclyde universities - they both lead innovation districts within the city and region. Broadly, Glasgow is leading our life science innovation and broadly it's advanced manufacturing at Strathclyde. The space the colleges are starting to get themselves into is the skills piece. They’re doing entry and graduate.

As a city and region, Professor Sir Jim McDonald chairs our economic leadership board, for example. That partnership with the universities has been really, really useful to some of the innovation work. In my old job, health and social work, that actually started with Strathclyde’s Technology & Innovation Centre.

Scotsman Leaders Forum Innovation - clockwise from top: Paul Lawrence, Sebastian Burnside, Susanne Miller, Liz McAreaveyScotsman Leaders Forum Innovation - clockwise from top: Paul Lawrence, Sebastian Burnside, Susanne Miller, Liz McAreavey
Scotsman Leaders Forum Innovation - clockwise from top: Paul Lawrence, Sebastian Burnside, Susanne Miller, Liz McAreavey | Lisa Ferguson

If anyone’s been in Glasgow recently, around the West End, the amount of investment from Glasgow University is absolutely astonishing. And because we’ve got the pre-existing partnership, through the city region work, that means we’ve done public realm work along Byres Road as they’ve been redeveloping the university. We’ve done that in partnership.

Paul Lawrence, City of Edinburgh Council chief executive

There are major ‘triple helix’ sites in our cities, sites of private enterprise, academic endeavour and a role in society. For us, for example, the BioQuarter in Edinburgh. But some of these sites are stuck either because of viability issues or are going at a snail’s pace compared to, for example, Cambridge. What a great win it would be for the UK government to say we’re going to have a national programme of accelerating innovation sites.

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To qualify, you’d have to have effective public-private partnerships, the council on board, universities on board, and you have got to have private business on board.

Liz McAreavey, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Chamber of CommerceLiz McAreavey, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce
Liz McAreavey, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce | LISA FERGUSON

And if the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, we're going to have a national innovation district program, or call it whatever you want, but we're going to really go for it, but in order to get in it, you've got to have a certain scale and a certain ambition and a certain nature of partnership, because we want these sites unlocked. So in Edinburgh, we've got two unbelievable out of town innovation sites, and we're trying to get private sector interest started at both the BioQuarter in the southeast of the city and at Herriot-Watt

Attracting private sector interest to really push those forward at scale is difficult. So we need 15 what you might call trophy sites around the UK, including at least four or five in Scotland, that you could really drive forward at that pace. They need to be seen as trophy assets.

Sebastian Burnside, chief economist at Natwest Group

I’d definitely reinforce the point about the connection between universities and the private sector because the innovation sites are super exciting. I was in one in Cheshire and you don’t have to spend much time there to see that collaboration happening, and the willingness and ability to take risk. Those can be really effective mechanisms.

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Clearly we often come in at the finance end of it, and where is the cash going to come from? There I am slightly torn. The truth is, it’s difficult if you’re an investor. Everyone likes to tell stories about how ‘x’ person, normally someone else, went to California and wrote an idea on a post it note and came back with £100 million. And maybe that happens a bit more over there, maybe it doesn’t. But investors in this have to expect that they’re going to lose money on 18 out of the 20 that they put money into. So you're really, really chasing the tails.

Paul Lawrence, Chief Executive of City of Edinburgh CouncilPaul Lawrence, Chief Executive of City of Edinburgh Council
Paul Lawrence, Chief Executive of City of Edinburgh Council | LISA FERGUSON

You have to make the ones that pay off, pay off incredibly big to make it make sense. And therefore, you shouldn’t be surprised that this is a big, big problem for businesses. Having said that, could we all collaborate to make that landscape easier to navigate, as to what criteria you’re going to have to hit in order to be a credible case to unlock that sort of funding source, yes, absolutely.

Liz McAreavey, Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce chief executive

Collaborating across ecosystems is really important. We have a roadmap for economic growth in Edinburgh - it’s largely industry-led - and we’re looking at what key sectors have investment propositions. So med-tech, digital health, energy and net zero and the green economy. You’ve got technology, software, data, creative - which is film and design and gaming and all the rest of it.

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There are really strong sectors in Scotland, but it’s the leadership piece around what the common narrative is, the storyboard about why people should invest in Scotland. What are the key sectors that we’ve got real strength in, and then what are the assets and enables that we have that we should be leveraging.

So we’ve got great universities. We’ve got a great, highly-educated workforce - particularly in Edinburgh. We’ve got vibrant tourism that brings volume to our city, creates a quality of life that attracts talent.

But we’re not telling the story well at all.

This is the third in a series of articles about the roundtable, which was held at The Balmoral in Edinburgh and chaired by Joshua King, Head of Business at The Scotsman

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