The appointment of Mark Logan as Scotland's first chief entrepreneur earlier this year was a welcome development.
The former executive at Skyscanner was named by the Scottish Government as a key adviser on its national strategy for economic transformation, focused on building a network of support for start-up and scale-up businesses.
Logan’s appointment to this new role has been broadly welcomed by businesses and is an endorsement of the Scottish Government’s commitment towards building an entrepreneurial culture.
While I share this enthusiasm, it is essential that Logan’s appointment is part of a wider series of government measures to nurture entrepreneurship.
For Scotland to achieve its full economic ambitions, our spin-out and start-up ecosystem has to be built upon a solid foundation of innovation, asset creation and investment, where universities are currently playing a critical role.
The supportive environment that Scotland’s universities are providing for emerging innovative businesses to help them reach their full potential needs to be recognised and further supported if we are to thrive as an entrepreneurial nation.
We need only look at the example of the entrepreneurial hubs in Massachusetts and California to see the impact of universities in promoting a start-up enterprise culture. Here we see hubs of university-supported biotech start-ups receiving the highest levels of financial support from the US Government’s National Institutes of Health, underlining the link between public funding, innovative institutes and successful start-up ecosystems.
This approach is enabling new businesses with innovative solutions addressing key healthcare challenges to grow and flourish.
These examples show us that entrepreneurship goes beyond supporting SMEs and fostering spin-outs by recognising and further assisting the key role being played by universities as an engine of innovation. Replicating this model in Scotland would pay significant economic dividends.
Another key challenge in growing Scotland’s entrepreneurial culture is how we bring together skills from visionary international industry partners who can complement the cutting-edge innovation that is currently being nurtured within our universities.
These partnerships are often essential in leveraging intellectual input and accelerating new ideas on an international scale. As we’ve seen from the numerous global business collaborations supported by The University of Edinburgh, they often attract new investment channels which can drive innovation forward at pace.
Effective international partnerships also benefit those operating within Scotland’s ecosystem as they provide the foundation for global network-building, mentoring and feedback.
The University of Edinburgh is among a number of Scottish universities which have been pioneers in developing international entrepreneurial collaborations with a strong focus on driving new spin-outs.
These include our support of the partnership between Bristol-Myers Squibb and Evotec to form LAB1407, a $20m academic bridge to identify and advance novel and breakthrough drug discovery opportunities across the UK’s academic institutions.
A further example of this collaborative approach came in 2020 when we announced a long-term partnership with Legal & General to establish the Advanced Care Research Centre. This seven-year multidisciplinary research programme, the first of its kind in the UK, is designed to improve understanding of care in later life and to revolutionise how it is delivered.
Other key partnerships which are driving entrepreneurship and also addressing key societal challenges include our collaboration with FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies to develop modern antibody-based medicines.
Universities have the experience and provide a base for innovative businesses that make many of these scalable collaborations possible. This builds close relationships which enable Scottish-based entrepreneurs to thrive on the global stage and can deliver immense economic impact.
Logan's appointment is certainly a welcome step in developing Scotland’s entrepreneurial culture. This must however be part of a wider mix that is focused on greater collaboration, international partnerships and further support of universities in the essential work they do to nurture research and innovation into successful businesses.
Scottish Government support to stimulate the strong partnerships between higher education institutions and emerging businesses will be a vital part of that mix if we are to create a more entrepreneurial culture and maximise the full economic potential this presents.
Andrea Taylor is the head of strategic partnerships at Edinburgh Innovations, the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service
