Levelling the playing field post-pandemic, by Joy Lewis, CEO, AAI EmployAbility

It’s no secret that 2020 turned the workplace on its head. While most of us have found ways to keep things moving and stay connected, the jury is still out on what the workplace will look like as we recover from Covid-19.

While some suggested the pandemic would be a “great equaliser”, reporting has shown quite the opposite, and that the socio-economic inequalities that existed previously have only been exacerbated. 

As the good news of vaccines and various employment-focused initiatives roll out across the UK, we come to a fork in the road. This is a time to either revert to our old ways or to make changes in our society, rectifying the issues that existed pre-pandemic, such as workplace inequality. I’d like to consider some of the potential positives of a post-pandemic employment landscape, as well as some social lessons we’d be remiss to forget as we look to rebuild the economy.

Staff enjoy the autonomy and the opportunity to shape how they work. Technology has helped to keep us connected and by now those companies still hiring have navigated this and are onboarding virtually.

In recruiting, remote working vastly expands available talent pools, allowing for greater access to candidates from underrepresented groups, negating lazy excuses that the talent ‘isn’t there.’ It also offers greater opportunities for people with disabilities to work how they want to, with one disabled candidate I spoke to recently telling me how much more energy they have now they can work from home.

As we consider how a mix of office and home-based work will manifest itself going forward, we must take a remote-first approach when looking for talent, considering how to best integrate them with other team members with regular check-ins, reminders of company values and HR initiatives that help people to feel connected and included. 

A recent study showed that women are 1.8 times more vulnerable to redundancy caused by the pandemic than men and, while women make up 39 per cent of the global workforce, 54 per cent of job losses have been among women. 

In this demographic, businesses must consider those returning to work after a career break; allowing flexible working around childcare and home life, and not underestimating what this woman returner audience has to offer.  

Since companies around the world pledged their support for Black Lives Matter last summer, jobseekers, employees, and customers have been looking to see how those promises will translate into action. 

The employment rate for minority ethnic groups in Scotland is 15% lower than that of the white population, and significantly worse for minority ethnic women, whose employment rate is 20% lower than white women. 

Racial diversity is not a ‘nice to have’ initiative, but a business-critical imperative, and one that employment can lead on. 

By considering how ‘equality of opportunity’ can enrich our teams, and having a more open-minded approach to how we hire and work, we can create environments where innovation, resilience and adaptability come from welcoming different voices, different values, different experiences and approaches to work. Imperative when navigating whatever the next year has in store for us.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 6th March 2021

Lockdown leadership - what matters most, by Rebecca Moore, COO, TravelNest

In February 2020 I took up my first Board and C-Suite role at TravelNest - a major milestone for any woman stepping up in a male dominated industry. Doing this two weeks before Covid struck and the travel industry was turned inside out added an extra challenge that there was no playbook for. A year on, it feels like the right time to share my journey and the things I’ve learned along the way.

TravelNest provides software to help vacation rental owners get more bookings. When Covid hit in March 2020, the impact was clear. As COO, my first act was to switch everyone to home working, ahead of government advice. I’m glad I did, as soon the impact struck close to home. On our first working from home day, I came down with Covid symptoms and mercifully avoided spreading it to colleagues. I’ve never been more grateful for following my instincts. This was not the only place we felt the force of Covid. Our platform advertises holiday homes on sites like Airbnb and Booking.com. We’d previously enjoyed beating our own booking performance month after month, but when the first lockdown hit, bookings flatlined. The team was scared. The only thing we did was process cancellations.

Our first actions were to look after our customers, vacation rental owners, who were hit hard by Covid, and guests. We upped our game with customer communications, supporting owners by blocking calendars, rescheduling numerous bookings, processing cancellations and providing updates on the latest developments. 

Within days, we implemented sweeping changes that previously would have taken months. Our priority was to provide the best service to customers, preserve our team and protect the business. We had to cut costs. We requested a 20% voluntary salary reduction, for which we had 100% opt in. We furloughed as many people as possible to protect jobs and worked with suppliers to carve out savings. Many of our owners were in dire straits - their income simply vanished. The team had upset guests to deal with, all wondering if they’d get their money back. They did a wonderful job processing every refund.

Throughout, we never stopped strengthening our business for the future, improving product processes and relaunching our culture and values. It was nerve-wracking yet exhilarating to be building for the future. Rewarding work anchored me when other parts of my life were challenging.

As Covid came under control, we experienced an incredible booking surge in July 2020 when the entire UK tried to book a holiday! We closed two funding rounds, totalling £1.8M, from Silicon Valley Bank and Scottish Enterprise, with both institutions recognising the opportunity we had. Now, we’re seeing an even greater bookings surge as confidence in the vaccine grows.

One year on, have I made mistakes? Undoubtedly. Have I been challenged like never before? Absolutely. I’ve learned a huge amount about leadership and have redefined what it means to be a leader. Honesty matters. How I behave, matters. Tough decisions taken early matter. Shaking off set backs and facing the next challenge matters. What I’ve redefined for myself - my capability to do all this - is deeper than I imagined. It took a World War to show that women can perform in any role. It has taken a global pandemic to show our true capacity to lead.

An edited version of this blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 27th February 2021

Edinburgh's 'Holy Trinity of Tech', by Nick Freer

With a slight nagging feeling about walking onto blasphemous ground, I termed Edinburgh’s tech scene as the city’s ‘Holy Trinity of Tech’ in an interview with global technology news site The Next Web in December 2017.  For me, the ‘Holy Trinity’ at that time was online travel site Skyscanner, the UK’s largest startup incubator CodeBase, and the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics.  Having advised all three on all things PR, I had seen first-hand the transformative effect each organisation was having on the nation’s tech ecosystem. 

Walking from a client photoshoot this week (socially distanced and outside), I passed Edinburgh’s Informatics Forum and Bayes Centre, Skyscanner’s HQ and then CodeBase all in the space of a mile.  It’s a concentration of tech talent that surely rivals many other global cities renowned for their own technology clusters.  I was also struck by a tinge of sadness that their hallowed halls lie empty and devoid of people in this time of pandemic.  

CodeBase, in particular, has been a melting pot for so many of the great things to come out of Scottish tech.  I remember sitting in CodeBase founder Jamie Coleman’s office six years ago, with a stunning view of Edinburgh Castle as a backdrop, with a former business reporter from this newspaper who asked a question along the lines of, “so, what’s actually going on in this place Jamie”?  

Coleman offered to write an opinion piece for The Scotsman a few weeks later in which he put it: “The raw material of this revolution is brainpower and that has always been the core asset of Scotland.  The industrial mindset of building bridges and steam engines has transitioned into building complex software.  We no longer have the chimneys of the industrial revolution in our cities; our factories are in the cloud.” 

Coleman was in the news this week in relation to what has been his main day job in more recent times - as co-founder and COO of LockBody, a biotech startup that has been acquired as a portfolio company alongside a series of other biotechs by US-based Centessa Pharmaceuticals in a $250 million Series A financing deal.  In its media announcement, Centessa explains the rationale of the deal: “The high-quality science and entrepreneurial drive within each of the Centessa subsidiaries, combined with this deeply experienced leadership team, has the potential to bring important medicines to patients with speed and efficiency.”   

In the Scottish context, we are currently working with two clients who are themselves starting to put Scotland increasingly on the global life sciences map.  Edinburgh-headquartered Cumulus Oncology, Europe’s first oncology drug discovery accelerator, was founded in 2017 to create spin-out companies around novel anti-cancer therapies that are fast-tracked through development and target cancers that don’t respond well to existing treatments.  

St Andrews-based Eos Advisory led Cumulus’s last funding round, and the investment firm announced a strategic partnership this week that will see Eos invest over £10 million into oncology-focused life sciences ventures founded in Scotland alongside North Carolina-based Kineticos.  Not only will the funding accelerate high skill R&D job creation in Scotland, it will also lay the ground for commercial opportunities in the world’s largest healthcare market.  

An edited version of this blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 20th February 2021

Science in the (virtual) spotlight, by Alan Wise, co-founder and chair of Cumulus Oncology

Our quest for knowledge and breakthrough discoveries in sciences works on a global scale. But the pandemic has meant scientists, like most other sectors, having to adjust to a brave new world. Our universal ecosystem is now one of virtual meetings via a myriad of video platforms. 

This was exemplified by the recent JP Morgan Healthcare Conference – an annual deal making San Francisco-based get-together of the more commercial sides of the biotech industry. I attended the virtual event in my role as Chair of Cumulus Oncology, a relatively new Edinburgh-based drug discovery company founded by local science entrepreneur Dr Clare Wareing. I certainly didn’t miss being charged $20 for a cappuccino nor the mass migration of delegates across vast auditoria every 30 minutes to make it to their next meeting, but what was missing was the spontaneity that comes with a live event and chance ‘corridor’ meetings. 

It is difficult to quantify this ‘human capital’ component and Cumulus Oncology has operated under these circumstances since it was capitalised last year with investment from St Andrews-based Eos Advisory. Our business model is to identify novel early stage therapeutic assets in Oncology which we deem to have transformational potential, and then to set up companies around these to raise investment to take them into clinical trials and hopefully through to approval once clinical benefit has been demonstrated. This ‘hub-and-spoke’ model is well established in the US with companies such as BridgeBio and Cullinan Oncology raising significant amounts of investment in a relatively short period of time. However, it is a fledgling model in Europe although being positioned in Scotland provides us access to world-leading scientific research at our universities, a scientific talent pool and a thriving network of biotech and contract research organisations. 

We have global ambitions and the move to virtual meeting platforms has enabled us to access novel opportunities across the world without the cost, time and environmental impact associated with international travel. One of our first ‘spin-outs’ is Modulus Oncology – a company set up in partnership with the University of Sheffield which has resulted from a drug discovery project funded largely by the UK’s Wellcome Trust in a novel area of cancer research. We are currently looking to raise investment to take the molecules discovered by the Sheffield team into clinical trials. Exciting times ahead.

During the pandemic, science has been in the global spotlight like never before. I’ve worked in the pharmaceutical sector for 25 years and I’m truly amazed at how quickly the scientific community has developed effective vaccines against this awful disease. In little over one year since the virus was first identified, five vaccines (at time of writing) have proved highly efficacious in relatively large clinical trials – this is an unprecedented scientific breakthrough – not least because all five have been developed using new and innovative technology platforms rather than the more traditional approaches to vaccine discovery. This bodes well for the future of vaccinology. However, the spectre of vaccine nationalism is raising its ugly head and threatening to overshadow the achievements of scientific teams working tirelessly and collaboratively irrespective of geographical boundaries. 

Surely the politicians can put their differences aside, dial down the rhetoric and put global healthcare first? If these scientific achievements inspire a new wave of youngsters to study STEM subjects and become future thought leaders in healthcare whilst reducing the levels of scepticism and mistrust of science, then these will be tangible outcomes from a dire global situation. We just need to work out a way of getting our students safely back into normal education as quickly as possible.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 13th February 2021

Embracing sustainability drives profitability, guest blog by Thrive Consulting founder Jane Dennyson

In the words of the prominent US environmentalist, David R. Brower, “There is no business on a dead planet”.   As this concept becomes a reality, companies are putting sustainability or ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) at the heart of corporate strategy and there is now clear momentum behind this agenda.  It is no longer optional for business to consider sustainability.  Quite simply, those who don’t are unlikely to survive the next ten years.

Last week BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink issued his annual letter to corporate leaders calling all companies, ”to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net-zero economy”, and remarked that, ”There is no company whose business model won’t be profoundly affected by the transition to a net-zero economy.”

The tone of rhetoric around the ESG agenda is shifting.  The words “opportunity” and “innovation” are sitting alongside “risk”: a strong theme at the World Economic Forum’s Virtual Davos conference this year.  There is clear and compelling evidence that those embracing the ESG agenda are outperforming those who are not.  

In November 2020, Fidelity’s Putting Sustainability to the Test report which analysed 2,660 firms, showed that :stocks with the lowest ESG ratings lost 23 per cent over 2020, while those with the top ratings saw a positive return of 0.4 per cent.”  

They commented, “The positive relationship between high ESG ratings and returns over the course of a market collapse and recovery, supports the view that a company’s focus on sustainability is fundamentally indicative of its board and management quality and its resilience.”  This feels particularly relevant as the UK leaves the EU.

We are now seeing the physical impacts of climate change first hand. The effects of global warming are significant, unpredictable and felt locally: the most obvious being the sheer number of extreme weather events we are experiencing.

Direct impacts are both operational and financial; supply chain disruption, changing agricultural yields and increasing insurance costs to overall asset value, cost of capital and the viability of products and services in a changing market.  Companies that recognise these potential risks are able to innovate and capture new markets, using this pivotal time as an opportunity to evolve, lead and create value. As a Scot who recently moved back (from London) I’m constantly reminded that innovation is core to our being.  Now is the time for companies to invest in this function and mindset. If there is one upside to this global pandemic, it has transformed how and where we do business, proving that even the largest corporations can adapt quickly when circumstance demands it.  

Of course, it’s not all about climate. Social and governance agendas remain in sharp focus with 2020 bringing many issues into the spotlight.  Earlier this month, State Street became the latest asset management firm to insist that companies disclose the racial and ethnic make-up of their boards. Their CEO Mr Taraporevala remarked: “The preponderance of evidence demonstrates unequivocally that racial and ethnic inequality is a systemic risk that threatens lives, companies, communities and our economy — and is material to long-term sustainable returns.” 

The call for corporate transparency has never been stronger and the business case is clear: it builds trust, helps attract and retain talent, generates better performance (through access to information) and improves efficiency.

Until recently the common misperception was that sustainability was at the cost of profitability. In February 2020, I created Thrive Consulting to dispel this by helping companies to identify and integrate ESG for a sustainable and profitable future.  We don’t believe the choice is either or.

An edited version of this blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 6th February 2021

Super size me(eting), guest blog by Opto Advisory founder Chris Wilson

What happens if you eat nothing but McDonalds for 30 days?  The answer of course was gruesomely demonstrated in the 2004 documentary ‘Super Size Me’ by Morgan Spurlock. In this film he ate McDs 3 times a day for 30 days.  The result?  Spurlock ballooned by 11.1 kg and 13% body fat.  The damage was not just physical – his mental health and libido took a battering as well.  Apparently, unwinding the impacts of this experiment took an extraordinary 14 months.  This came to mind as I reflected on working practices as we emerge from the COVID fog. 

I must confess to being a bit of a ‘foodie’ – certainly in the live to eat vs eat to live camp.  Of course, food is about nutrition, however, the customs of food go much further than that.  We shop and interact with each other – chance encounters to keep track of what’s going on in the world.   We prepare food together, and perhaps take more time to hear how people we care about are keeping.  We eat together as friends and family – laughing, crying, sharing and caring.  Sometimes, it’s snatching a quick sandwich at Pret, sometimes it’s a planned all evening session.  Occasionally, a chance encounter with friends becomes dinner and a moment to remember.  In all, we deepen our connections and try to help each other.

Is work not a bit like food?  The way many people are having to do it at the moment is stripping away a lot of the customs that really makes us effective.   With all the home/video working I hear conversations about ‘more focused’ or ‘more productive’ all the time, but are we really?  Or, are we just consuming like Mr Spurlock?  

If I reflect on the things I’ve been involved in that have had the biggest positive benefit for customers, few originated in a meeting about improving the customers experience.  A TV show to help protect people being scammed on the back of a chance conversation with the forward-thinking CEO of a TV company.  A new quick response vehicle to help people impacted by floods conceived in a supermarket car park in the midst of a storm.  The satellite dish on the top of mobile banks on the back of a chance encounter with an old family friend who worked in IT and found a ‘work around’ for rather bureaucratic processes.    

There is no question we have adopted some more efficient working practices in response to the pandemic.   These new ways of working are a great ‘leveller’ and are certainly more convenient.  Like convenience food though, we can’t survive on a diet of this alone.

If we do, I fear we will lose the important discoveries that are found in the space between meetings.  The chance encounters, the hallway outside the meeting room or the team dinner.   Just like in Super Size Me, if you only do one thing all the time, it becomes unhealthy.  

We have been forced to ‘Super Size Meetings’ by the pandemic.  Like Mr Spurlock, we need to bring balance back to our working lives and this will take time.  I’ve heard a lot of talk about a ‘blended’ workforce, but not seen much detail on how that will work. This can’t just be splitting our time between home and the office.  It needs more careful thought and planning on how this blend can practically be achieved – which it can be.    

If not, I fear it will be like a dinner party with a few friends dialling in – it just won’t work and no-one will really enjoy it.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 23rd January 2021

What do business leaders hope for in 2021? By Nick Freer

As the business scene looks ahead to 2021, many are now focused on an economic recovery underpinned by a successful deployment of the vaccine.  As we chart our way through another lockdown, our working and personal lives are as entwined as they have ever been before as we find ourselves holed up at home again.   

Businesses everywhere continue to adjust to keeping the wheels turning with remote workforces, those with children are back to juggling the work day with homeschooling, and all the time in the background there is the spectre of Covid and never-ending headlines around public health.

I read somewhere recently that Napoleon said a leader’s role is to define reality and provide hope.  As Covid-19 continues to bite, it feels hard to define realistic hopes for 2021, but in this vein I decided to ask a few business leaders what their own hopes are for the new year.

Gib Bulloch, Geneva-based author of The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a Corporate Insurgent and founder of the Craigberoch Business Decelerator, sees Covid as a chance to reset: “One silver lining from 2020 was the fact that the business world was forced to slow down and catch its breath - a temporary opportunity for busy executives to lift their gaze and reflect, less on what they’re doing, but more on where they’re going.” 

He continues: “My sincere hope for 2021 is that we don’t simply see the vaccine as an opportunity to jump right back onto the hamster wheel, but instead to press the reset button on the pace and priorities of our working lives.” 

Nicki Denholm, Founder and CEO at Denholm Associates, the Scottish executive recruitment specialist that has seen a spike in digital hiring since lockdown, says: “One of the positive aspects of the Covid-19 crisis was the acceleration of flexible working.  As the pandemic recedes, I hope that employers will continue to invest in digital connectivity and that government facilitates better infrastructure.  This will not only create a more inclusive and diverse world of work, but one that’s healthier, happier and more productive for us all.”

Melinda Matthews-Clarkson, CEO of CodeClan, the digital skills academy that marked its one thousandth graduate last September, says homeschooling can be “a big mental drain and is taking a toll on employees and, in turn, productivity”.  While being an obvious advocate of digital skills, Matthews-Clarkson says she hopes we can get back to physical events in the not too distant future: “The recent Turing Fest was online and it was great but you can’t network and really connect.  We need that back please.” 

Matt Fountain, founder of Glasgow-based social enterprise Freedom Bakery, whose planned new facility has been held up by government restrictions on construction sector activity, says: “My hope for 2021 is to see that business grows on the resilience built through the pandemic to create a more sustainable future, particularly when it comes to the welfare of employees.  Although we will overcome the pandemic, we face other great challenges ahead, particularly with the environment.”  

FutureX Co-founder Zoi Kantounatou, embedded in Scotland’s entrepreneurial circles, told me: “My hopes for 2021 are my belief in humanity and the world we can create by working together.  This year, I would like to see us start rebuilding all that we realised was broken in 2020; systems, structures, injustices and access.  Let’s spend this year reimagining and bringing to life a world that serves everyone.”  

Amen to that.  

An edited version of this blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 16th January 2021

Brake or Break? A new pace for business in the new year, guest blog by Gib Bulloch, author of The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a corporate insurgent and Founder of Craigberoch Business Decelerator

Even if you’re not a huge fan of Formula One racing, it’s easy to get caught up in the thrill and excitement of watching the skilful Lewis Hamilton, now heading the list of the greatest F1 drivers of all time. Of course, Scotland has its fair share of racing driver heroes. Who can forget the talents of David Coulthard and the great Jackie Stewart who powered F1 circuits in their day? Yet, any of one of these drivers will tell you that it is not difficult to simply drive fast. The real skill is in the timing of using the brake—knowing precisely when to slow down and when to accelerate.

In business, we have certainly mastered the accelerator pedal. Indeed, we’ve had a proverbial foot planted firmly on it for the past few decades. It’s not that we’re less skillful with the brake—I believe we’ve forgotten it even exists. 

Having worked in large global businesses for more than 25 years, I recall days packed with conference calls, meetings and plenty of travel. The nine to five had become more of a five to nine for many people. Working through lunch or responding to e-mail at the weekends was seen as evidence of commitment and loyalty—actions to be admired or copied.

Brake before you break

For my own part, by forgetting to apply the brake, I found myself having a breakdown and spent almost a week in a Glasgow psychiatric hospital just over five years ago. To my surprise at the time, I wasn’t the only business professional in residence. That episode was the catalyst for writing a book which seeks to shift the debate from a singular focus on the mental health of individuals, to looking at the mental health of the system in which we are operating. Breakdown, burnout and disengagement are perfectly normal human responses to a corporate system whose pace and expectation has escalated, as a result of digital technologies, so that it is now unsustainable.

For a while, the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to offer one ray of comfort in its bleak onslaught on our economies and societies—an opportunity to step off the hamster wheel and slow down. No longer would we be judged by the number of hours spent conspicuously at our desks under the watchful eye of our bosses and peers. Instead, our contribution would be calculated solely on the outputs and results we achieved.  

During the first lockdown, I recall the feeling of having the luxury of time—no international travel, social restrictions and the absence of the daily commute meant I suddenly felt free to think and be in a way that I could barely remember. Unfortunately, for many, these time savings did not translate into more downtime or the opportunity for more breaks. They were used to add even more hours to the working day. The online business network LinkedIn noted in May 2020 that the working day had increased by 15 percent, with people beginning their day 45 minutes earlier and ending their working day 40 minutes later than usual. It’s a fast track to more burn out. 

The second lockdown offered a second chance for us all. As a “knowledge worker” myself, I can work remotely and have managed to carve out a different cadence to my daily routine. I now include yoga, meditation and a lengthy walk into my day and give myself a deadline for shutting down the computer. Of course, I catch myself drifting back into bad habits, but so far the legacy of the second lockdown is more beneficial than the first.

I believe we need to fundamentally rethink what we do as business professionals and why we do it. It’s why I set up a business “decelerator” on The Isle of Bute where I grew up. It’s a direct and deliberate challenge to our current corporate culture which appears obsessed with a “bigger-must-be-better” mindset. If businesses are going to be a force for good in the world, then we need to create the headspace for people to help them do so. A collective new year resolution could be for us to be quicker at slowing down. After all, a wee dab on the brake pedal might give us a chance to break the system rather than ourselves.

2020 wrap: keeping things possible in an impossible year, by Nick Freer

Saying 2020 is not the year anyone expected is an understatement of epic proportions.  As individuals we have wanted to protect our families in the face of the pandemic, as businesses have tried to protect their people.  As we look ahead to 2021, many remain circumspect and, where possible, the optimists among us see the light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel.  

This time last year we were preparing to take our kids skiing in the Alps for the first time.  Staying in a small French village in a valley surrounded by a cathedral of majestic, snow-covered summits, it felt good to breathe in the mountain air and still be a bona fide European on the continent ahead of that status being removed in a fashion that still feels like some kind of horrible fly-by-night mugging.  

My own memories of life immediately before the coronavirus pandemic became a cruel feature of everyday existence, include a few days away in the Cairngorms in February; going out for a birthday dinner in a busy hotel restaurant, rubbing shoulders with the locals, all that kind of good stuff that was simply living life in the way in which we were all accustomed before Covid struck.

Talking of mountains, while some of my agency clients ran for the hills as the pandemic took hold, many stuck with us and I can’t thank each and everyone one of them enough for their continuing support.  In return, I hope we have done some of our best work this year. 

Taking some time out to reflect on client activity, a few highlights stand out.  In January, we teamed up with Deliveroo’s London PR team to announce one of Europe’s fastest-growing technology company’s commitment to Scotland following its acquisition of Cultivate in 2019. 

Moving through the year, we supported mainstay clients like Scotland’s leading conference venue, the EICC, Scottish independent legal firm Anderson Strathern and private bank Hampden & Co - and it has been gratifying to see each business receive high profile industry awards in recent weeks in no small part because of how well they have handled such tumultuous times.  

In the startup space, we handled PR for a number of tech companies who really came into their own during Covid.  Companies like Forrit who enabled Microsoft Education to seamlessly deal with a four-fold increase in web traffic during the onset of the pandemic,  xDesign developing a Covid-19 app for NHS 24 in less than a week, Care Sourcer coming to the rescue of local authorities dealing with thousands of people leaving hospital for care homes, and Trickle offering its employee engagement platform for free as organisations struggled to communicate with remote workforces.   

As we know, technology has helped the business world navigate the coronavirus crisis and as Mark Logan covered in his watershed report into Scotland’s technology ecosystem in August, our digital economy needs all the support it can get.  Digital skills have become increasingly important as outlined by CodeClan’s CEO Melinda Matthews-Clarkson in The Scotsman earlier this year: “We know that digitisation and data will be crucial in guiding our business scene through the coronavirus pandemic and then out the other side.” 

We advised Copenhagen-headquartered online review platform Trustpilot and San Francisco-headquartered UserTesting as both tech firms strengthened their offices in Edinburgh during the second half of 2020 with R&D funding support from Scottish Enterprise.  At the same time, we strengthened our own credentials as the go-to media relations agency for UK and international tech groups launching offices in Scotland.  

Thank you to all those who have written for this column over the last twelve months.  Amazing individuals like Munich-based David Scrimgeour MBE, Vocaldata’s Laura Westring, dressCode’s Toni Scullion, Andragogy’s Anneli Ritari-Stewart, Dr Steve Ewing from the Bayes Centre, CodeBase’s Oli Littlejohn, UserTesting’s Andy MacMillan, Cumulus Oncology’s Clare Wareing, Eos Advisory’s Mark Beaumont, Craigberoch’s Gib Bulloch and Papple Steading’s George Mackintosh, to name just a few.    

I’ve got to make more new business contacts and friends this year than I ever thought possible given everything going on in the world.  Chained to my desk staring at the same four walls every day, it’s just not something I expected to happen, and it’s been one of the highlights of what has otherwise been such an impossible year. 

An edited version of this post ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 19th December

Scotland to Bavaria, guest post by David Scrimgeour MBE, former Scottish Government investment representative in Germany and Austria and founder of the British-German Business Network

Despite having travelled extensively in Europe and having lived and worked in Holland for a year I had never previously visited Germany and had not studied German at school. My wife Barbara came from a small village in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria and, before my first visit there in 1986, I imagined a bucolic world of thatched cottages, connected by grassy paths and farmers. Instead it was indoor swimming pools, well-polished Mercs and motorways with no speed limit.

The main culture shock was the language given that I did not speak any German when Barbara and I met. We had a LDR (long-distance relationship) for over 4 years before I moved over to Germany in 1990. During these early years I attended night school in Edinburgh to learn German only to be confronted with “Oberpfälzisch”, the local dialect, when I visited every 3 months or so. This dialect is on a par with Doric for difficulty but eventually I was able to understand my future father-in-law’s jokes. 

British Airways and British Telecom were draining my financial resources so I decided to move to Germany in July 1990. We were married in the "Schottenkirche" (Church of the Scots) in Regensburg, a Roman city on the Danube, later that month. Working in a local law firm was also a shock in many ways. In the practice in Edinburgh I had been used to lots of interaction and regular nights out drinking with my colleagues. But there was no question now of fraternising with my fellow lawyers who worked behind closed doors all day and then went home to their families every night. Work and play did not mix in southern Germany back then.

We now live together in Munich and have brought up two bilingual children here. Our daughter lives and works in Edinburgh and our son is studying at Regensburg University. I love living in Munich, in normal times the quality of life is tremendous, the connectivity to other parts of Europe by road, rail and air is perfect. And the city itself is a safe, clean and culturally stimulating environment. Education is mostly free for schooling and for university which takes the financial pressure off parents.

From a business perspective Germany has a very different culture from the UK. It is intensely competitive here but without being obviously so – which makes it dangerous for incoming companies. There are strict but unwritten rules about how to operate as an external adviser and it takes time to learn these. However, the systems and procedures generally make sense and there exists a high degree of trust in the marketplace which makes commerce flow.

I am fully integrated, also in terms of my pension and healthcare, so Brexit is certainly a disaster but not for me. In fact, I am now also a citizen of Germany having fulfilled the necessary requirements. The threat of Brexit encouraged me to take this step as I did not want to be dependent on the vagaries of a xenophobic government administration in the UK. Unfortunately, my wife may well have difficulties if we ever planned to return to live in Scotland after the end of 2020.

I know plenty of expats here who do not share my comfortable position or do not want to become German citizens. Many are extremely worried about freedom of movement, health insurance and cross-border care of ageing relatives. A good friend of mine, David Hole, has organised a lobbying and information initiative "Brits in Bavaria" to try to help people in this very difficult situation.

Brexit impacts on my own business in that all the German companies that are engaged in business in the UK have suffered difficulty and losses. In Bavaria exports to the UK have declined by 20%, which is equal to a total loss of €3 billion since the referendum. This equates to thousands of very unhappy people who have lost trust in the UK as a stable political and economic partner. The long-term damage caused to our country's reputation by more than four years of uncertainty is incalculable.

An edited version of this blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 5th December 2020

What gets done gets measured, guest post by Opto Advisory founder Chris Wilson

In this new world, we will not always be able to catch the unintended consequences of our actions.  What really drives behaviour?

I’ve had the pleasure of leading businesses in a number of sectors and have seen the traditional reversal of this saying, ‘what gets measured gets done’, menacingly scrawled in in permanent marker on white boards in all manner of workplaces.  

I too was a disciple.  Target the behaviours you want, pick the measure that you believe will show it’s working and, hey presto – watch as the sales flood in, costs will tumble and things will generally be better.  

I even adopted this approach as a parent.  I can distinctly remember lining up two of my kids in front of a ‘reward’ chart when they were little.   A vein attempt to get them to use cutlery, the potty, get to bed on time, you know the story.  In response to this approach, I can distinctly remember my oldest (then 4) looking quizzically and simply responding “daddy, can you not pick things we already do”...

And there we have it, what gets measured does not in fact get done.  In reality, we pick things that we believe will make changes we want, then make ourselves feel better by managing the numbers.  But what actually gets done?

One example haunts me from when I ran a bank branch network.  We came up with a great plan to get our staff to contact more customers that rarely came to branches to ‘meet their needs’ (sell to them!).   

To encourage them, we set staff a target of a percentage of appointments to be with these customers as opposed to from traditional ‘walk-ins’.   I remember visiting a branch and having a lovely honest chat with one of the team.  She explained that a customer had walked in off the street to get a mortgage the previous Friday afternoon and she had declined to meet them (her diary was clear).  Instead, saying it needed to be booked in the following week. Why, because seeing this ‘walk in’ would have meant she missed her ‘self-generation’ percentage target for the week!  

So, what got done (meeting booked the following week) got measured.  In many instances, the customer would simply have gone elsewhere, and we would never had known.

Another more worrying tale was when I was responsible for a group of motor repair centres where we were trying to encourage more standardised repair methods that were safer and more efficient (quicker!).   Again, we came up with some measure of success: how quick teams were.   I recall a site visit where I saw a rather alarming corner being cut that could have caused some serious harm.  Again, what got done (less safe repairs) got measured, quicker.  

In both cases, the guys at the front line were not trying to cheat or do anything dishonest, they were hard working dedicated employees simply trying their best to deliver.  The issue was mine for thinking that measures alone will get the best outcomes.

As we ponder how we manage and lead businesses in this new world, this has become even more problematic.  In both these instances, it was only when I was out in the business that I could see what was actually going wrong – the unintended consequences.   In the case of my kids, the spaghetti splattered walls and bathroom floors liberally pee’d on certainly told me the measures were not working.  

As people work more remotely without line of sight, we need to be even more mindful of how we lead.  Great care has to be taken when thinking about how we seek to create success in a business.   Instead of the traditional notion that you can coerce behaviour out of people by simply measuring what you want them to do, leaders that will succeed need a little more sophistication.   

Real success happens when you are clear on the values and behaviours that will truly help your customers.  With that potent knowledge, you can then attract people that instinctively live and love those values and behaviours.  If you give these talented people a clear sense of purpose and unleash them on your customers, they will naturally do the things that they need and value.   

When that gets done, you will be able to measure your real success.

An edited version of this post ran as on op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 21st November 2020

New challenges during Covid, guest blog by Andragogy.co's Anneli Ritari-Stewart

What is the secret of peak performance in business and sport? Hard work, perseverance and skill are essential. But there is another often neglected element which optimises results. 

Growing up in Sweden I played football from a young age and continued to play at a high level until my thirties. An injury put an end to my football career but instead I took up running. I started with shorter races before moving on to marathons and ultra-marathons. 

Once I had my two boys, now aged 5 and 7 I needed a new sport and took up powerlifting. I won “Best Female Lifter” in the Scottish Masters Championships three years in a row and had the opportunity to be part of Team Scotland and medal at the Commonwealth Championships.  

At the start of the 2020, I decided that I needed a new challenge and signed up for a physique competition. I started training in January but due to the pandemic competitions kept getting cancelled. It was tempting to give up as the goal post kept moving further away.

Finally, I competed at the UKDFBA’s (United Kingdom Drug Free Bodybuilding Association) UK International Championships in October where I won the Novice FitBody class. 

Performing in sports has made me realise that you can achieve almost anything you set your mind to. However, hard work and tenacity are simply not enough. The missing link was an expert led, data-driven and meticulous approach to training.

Working with experts, I left no stone unturned, whether it was calculating how many tons I lifted in each session, running at a specific heart rate, or sculpting a particular body part. I even developed a spreadsheet which calculated my carbohydrate consumption per mile. This helped take 1.5 hours off my marathon time. 

Coaching and training helped me understand exactly what I had to do to improve and in what areas. I used technology to measure my progress and evaluate what worked. Precision is crucial. 

And so, when I got the opportunity to work with Andragogy.co which uses a blend of experts, technology and a data driven approach to learning and development I leapt at the chance to use the same approach for businesses too. 

I interviewed 50 senior executives asking them about their digital skills gap and their training plans. None of the companies I spoke with used a data driven approach. When it comes to marketing, for example, we are obsessed by data, so why are we not using the same approach when it comes to improving people’s skills?

This is often because companies rely on team leaders or the individuals themselves to seek out the training they need. Busy leaders may not have the time or skills to do this and it is hard for individuals to know what they do not know. 

Andragogy.co helps individuals and teams to operate at their peak performance by assessing the skills gap and providing tailor-made individual plans to plug those gaps. Much like my use of technology to inform my performance, they gather data to inform business-wide skills development which is crucial for companies looking to accelerate their digitisation.  

I also believe that this approach can help improve diversity and nurture a mix of talent in teams. Using an assessment as part of recruitment can also eradicate some of the subjectivity and bias which often leads to certain groups being under-represented.  

The pandemic has also shone a spotlight on mental health and wellbeing. I have also felt emotional highs and lows and uncertainty about the future. Staying goal focused and enjoying the training has helped my mental well-being. Seeing constant progress gave me a sense of strength and it also helped me drive business forward.

This is also why I have volunteered to drive an initiative to develop future business leaders for Scottish Women in Sport in partnership with SAMH (Scottish Association for Mental Health). We are designing a mentorship program for young sports women to help them build mental resilience and the belief that they can achieve anything they set out to do in life. Despite the pandemic, I believe that is true and now more than ever we need to help our future leaders have that confidence too. 

An edited version of this blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 9th November 2020

Startups and podcasts, guest post by Oli Littlejohn, Head of Partnerships, CodeBase

I'm pretty lucky that I've gotten to work with the Scottish startup community for the last seven years. I stumbled into it more or less accidentally, taking a temp job doing administrative and events work. It was immediately apparent that it was something special to be a part of - the fast moving nature and the way people were so supportive of each other really appealed to me. But the biggest thing was the constant state of learning. When you work in a startup, every day is a school day.

When I started learning about the world of startups, there were a handful of resources you could tap into: blog posts on how to build your company by the enormously successful accelerator programme Y Combinator; videos covering design, user experience, and product management by coding bootcamp General Assembly; and tales of startup success and failure from renowned venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz on their seminal podcast, a16z.

I learned so much from this podcast, and still do. They have regular segments covering startup playbooks and a peek behind the curtain at how some of the world's fastest growing companies have implemented them. They created a back catalogue, a greatest hits that you could refer any new founder to and know that if they took the time to listen they'd immediately up their game.

But, there's something that often jars when listening to them talk. Andreessen Horowitz are based in the city of Menlo Park, south of San Francisco, where Google were founded and Facebook are now headquartered. Sure, they could share incredible stories of founders beating the odds, but it was all against the backdrop of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. Stories of success, and indeed what success means, didn't always translate.

There's something on the internet called the 1% rule. It comes in different forms, but loosely it states that for any online community, you have three categories of people: 90% of folks will just consume content - they read blog posts, listen to podcasts, watch videos. 9% will actively engage in that content - they'll post comments, have a conversation on Twitter, share their 2 pence on the matter. The final 1% actually create new content.

What gets me excited is that in the last few years we've seen a lot more people move into that 1%. We're no longer just absorbing the views of others and perhaps discussing those views at the water cooler. Being able to critically examine our experiences and share those thoughts globally is a strong sign of maturity in the ecosystem. It's a sign that we're ready to start teaching rather than learning.

There are plenty of podcasts talking about startup culture in Scotland. We've got How AI Built This, where Liam Wilson brings in experts in the world artificial intelligence and machine learning. The Data Lab's podcast examines how data is used in everything from healthcare to finances. Erik Ravaglia presents Adventures in the Creative Industries, bringing warts and all tales of the Scottish creative scene. I feel obliged to plug the podcast I produce, Startupification, where my pals Matt and Steven look at the evolution of startup thinking (plug finished).

There are loads more. And I'm just focused on podcasts that look at business and technology - there's many more that explore culture, entertainment, science, the arts, etc. That's the beauty of podcasting. If you have something you want to talk about, the barriers to entry are relatively low. Unlike mainstream radio where you need connections and hustle, you can simply start recording on a smartphone (as we have done a few times with Startupification) and release it to the world. The infrastructure is all there - with very limited tech knowledge, your voice can immediately be heard on a global platform.

For me, these grassroots moments are what make an ecosystem thrive. It's great to hear new voices bubbling up from the primordial soup of the startup world, giving their world view and disseminating it publicly, for others to learn from and push back on. These voices help us collectively reflect on what has been working and what hasn't, and what we should be striving to do for the future.

I think we're going to continue to see more podcasts pop up from our tech and business community. We have our own unique worldview, and stories to tell. Hopefully we're just getting started telling them.

An edited version of this blog appeared as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 2nd November

The four questions that bring ingenuity to life, guest post by Kim McCann, partner, PA Consulting

Throughout history, Scots have always found the commercial opportunity in the latest cutting-edge technology and innovation. From James Watt’s application of the steam engine to drive factory production, to John Boyd Dunlop putting the industry on wheels with the pneumatic tyre - we’ve helped drive progress through ingenuity. 

The world needs our ingenuity now, more than ever, as it faces existential challenges like pandemics and to climate change. The Scottish economy and business world have all the skills and capabilities needed to respond. From energy and engineering skills to world leading scientific institutions. The opportunity is there for Scottish business leaders to harness these skills and find the commercial opportunity in technology and innovation. 

To identify the right opportunity for commercial innovation requires business leaders to ask themselves four things. Firstly, what need does technology meet? What gap does it fill in peoples’ lives? Profit is only ever an outcome of adding value to society. Your innovation must solve a problem.

Secondly, is the idea technologically feasible? There’s no point spending heavily on something if science and engineering won’t support it. This is not easy, especially while running a going concern. At PA, we use our “Dark Matter” AI analysis and research tools to help businesses scan the landscape for the right innovation opportunities. 

Third, is there a commercial business in this? Many technologies fail in the “valley of death” between being technological feasibility and commerciality. Starting with the commerciality in mind is key, don’t let yourself get drawn to the cool tech with no real business model.

Today the fourth question is more important than ever, is the idea sustainable? Sustainability, whether it’s preventing waste or minimising emissions, is also a huge opportunity for innovation. As specialist technical advisors to the UN global compact, we know that to produce, consume and dispose is no longer an acceptable way forward for business, circularity by design must be considered in any innovation or business opportunity. 

Swedish business, PulPac came to us with an idea on how to use their dry form pressing process to give cellulose pulp the tensile strength and flexibility of plastic, with higher quality and lower cost. Meaning good old paper can replace everyday plastics such as fruit cups, razors, to coffee pods. 

This wouldn’t have happened without the human need for a sustainable replacement of the 300 million tonnes of plastic we produce every year, half of it single use. We helped PulPac commercialise their idea, and we are now seeing the first commercial-scale production lines installed by consumer goods companies across the globe.

Another technology that shows that commercial opportunity can grow from adversity is Airora. The Airora technology recreates the safety of outdoor air indoors, harnessing natures detergent, Hydroxyl Radicals, to make indoor enclosed spaces, just as safe from pathogens like COVID-19, as the great outdoors. Scottish manufacturers are also in the running to benefit from this new technology, as they look to partner with us to produce Airora at scale to help address the current pandemic. 

The process combines ozone, UV light and plant oils to produce hydroxyl radicals that condense on any pathogen – like a virus or bacteria – and neutralise it. After joining forces with start-up Hydroxyl Technologies in April, we’ve developed the technology to the point where the first units are going into NHS hospitals this month. 

It’s a reminder that real breakthroughs, like motorised transport or even bagless vacuums, are so dramatic that no one imagined them. Yet, once they take commercial shape, they become indispensable.

With this sort of thinking, profit is a by-product, not the sole purpose. Searching for that unmet human need is vital to what we at PA call a positive human future. And it’s a spur to ingenuity that Watt and Dunlop would surely have welcomed to herald our country, economy and humanity forward.

An edited version of this post ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 26th October 2020

Scottish startups soar at EIE20, by Nick Freer

EIE20

EIE20 went virtual for the first time last week, with almost one thousand attendees including investors from every corner of the earth. 50 startups pitched for seed to series A funding up to £5 million and it’s always a highlight of Scotland’s tech calendar to see so many exciting early stage technology companies in one place. 

Ethical data was a common theme, as marked out by Shannon Vallor, senior Baillie Gifford executive and Director of the Centre for Technomoral Futures at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. While there wasn’t an official pitch of the day award this year, my pick went to Andrew Duncan of Soar, a Scottish fintech that works closely with credit unions and other not-for-profit banks to help deliver digital products. For me, next on the podium was hotel app startup Criton’s CEO and founder Julie Grieve, followed by sensor technology startup Beringar’s co-founder Mark Sorsa-Leslie. 

Startup founders pitched technology solutions ranging from robots improving the cultivation of strawberry crops to a platform enabling last mile-access to lifesaving vaccines for children in developing countries. The fintech sector was well represented including Melbourne-headquartered Gobbill who develop cybersecurity products and is looking to relocate some of its operations to Scotland, and mobile authentication startup PolyDigi Tech who recently relocated its global headquarters from Hong Kong to Edinburgh. 

Internationalisation was another main theme at EIE20, with online “pavilions” dedicated to Germany, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. Keynote speaker Lord Bilimoria, Cobra Beer founder and President of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), was a highlight on the day and his talk created a lot of buzz on EIE’s conference chat channel.

Lord Bilimoria recounted how he had arrived in the UK from India as a 19-year-old before going on to found Cobra Beer during recessionary times. “Entrepreneurship was looked down upon at that time”, said the CBI president, “now entrepreneurs are celebrated”. He added: “Our country is at a crossroads and we must innovate our way out of this”, as he described how Covid-19 “came out of nowhere” and “reverberated through supply chains”. The Cobra founder revealed that his own beer business lost over two-thirds of its sales following lockdown with only supermarket sales keeping the wheels turning. 

Bilimoria, who is also the Chancellor at the University of Birmingham, praised UK’s university sector - “I am passionate about our universities, they are the best in the world next to the United States” - and picked out the University of Edinburgh for its record in R&D and spin-out companies, “81 per cent of which still exist”, and the city’s reputation as a leading European data hub. 

Another keynote, Jacqueline de Rojas, President of techUK, said the organisation has seen the demand for digital skills “grow exponentially on the back of Covid-19” while championing diversity in the tech sector.  

I really enjoyed EIE this time around. Unlike previous years, I spent most of it in lounge wear, made hot beverages for myself, answered the front door for deliveries on a couple of occasions and made sure the kids didn’t trip over my laptop lead when they got back from school. A brave new world I guess, or something like that. 

Car valet

One of my less impressive lockdown stories (there are quite a few to pick from) involves a resident pair of wood pigeons who spent weeks nesting, with associated droppings, directly above our parked and very stationary car. I should have moved the family wagon and my excuse as to the state it ended up in (just think of Bass Rock off North Berwick if you can’t imagine the scene) centres on a lack of free parking spaces because no-one was out on the roads combined with a more general streak of personal laziness.

Anyway, I had the pleasure of meeting a young founder last week who has just secured one of the top Scottish EDGE awards for his car valet startup and it turned out that one of his franchisee operators had been the guy we got to sort out the embarrassing wood pigeon problem post-lockdown in July. Talk about customer service, Vidmantis spent five hours completing what can’t have been a pleasant job. 

Founder Sam Brennan has a whiff of Blackcircles.com founder Mike Welch about him, having developed a so-called “car care-as-a-service” technology platform to create a new digital marketplace, and his Fresh Car Valet startup is definitely one to watch. 

An edited version of this blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 19th October 2020

Scottish startup bucks travel sector woes, by Nick Freer

Back in February, when it felt like we still lived in a pre-Covid existence, I attended and helped to publicise the Travalyst conference at the EICC in Edinburgh alongside Prince Harry’s (when he was still called Prince Harry) team at an international business event that featured industry sector players like Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Skyscanner. 

Like so much in our post-Covid world, how much has changed since then is one of those things you occasionally sit back and think about and it never stops being anything short of mind-blowing. The travel sector, in particular, has been turned on its head and it’s tough to see how our own travel tech superstar Skyscanner has had its wings clipped since the onset of the pandemic. 

In the autumn of 2017 when I was with my family up near Aviemore, I got a call from a contact who put me in touch with TravelNest founder Doug Stephenson. TravelNest, a platform positioned to support holiday rental owners, had been founded three years before, was building its product and team, making some impressive hires including Skyscanner’s former chief technology officer, and was on the verge of a £3 million investment round led by venture capitalist firms Pentech, Mangrove Capital Partners and Frontline Ventures.  

I spent the next couple of weeks giving Doug and his leadership team advice around the planned funding announcement from our own holiday rental property up on Speyside. Fast forward three years, and Stephenson and TravelNest are poised to be one of the rare winners in a sector ravaged by Covid-19. 

Catching up with the TravelNest team recently, I was keen to hear how staycation trends are benefiting the business since tourism reopened post-lockdown. Some of the numbers tell the story best, including a 250 per cent year-on-year increase in reservations in July when the platform experienced a record booking month with over £1 million in total booking value (TBV), the standard industry yardstick, achieved.  

As one of TravelNest’s marketing executives puts it, “since tourism reopened, significant traveler behavioural change has led to switching from international to domestic, hotel to vacation rentals and urban to rural”. All startups are on a mission and in TravelNest’s case it is to “dramatically improve occupancy while reducing administration time for vacation rental owners and hosts”.  

While vacation rentals through platforms like Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia have risen rapidly, a high percentage of nights can still remain unsold, what TravelNest describes as a “disconnect between demand and supply”. When the travel tech startup points to over 80 per cent of properties being listed on a single channel, you get a clear picture of how market dynamics play to its advantage. In ‘startup speak’, it is ready to disrupt a fast-growing marketplace and already counts thousands of customers and properties on its site.

In a TravelNest traveler optimism survey carried out prior to the easing of lockdown, 73 per cent of respondents said they were likely or very likely to book a trip once Covid-19 restrictions eased; 84 per cent planned to take a trip over the next twelve months; 88 per cent of people said they would prefer to travel in their own car and 66 per cent said their preference was for a holiday rental. Pre-Covid, vacation rentals made up around 15 per cent of overall holiday accommodation and the TravelNest survey says this percentage could quadruple over the next year alone.  

Data indicates that holiday rentals will continue to take market share from hotels, as after staying in a holiday home for the first time the likelihood that a traveler will choose a vacation rental over a hotel for future travel accommodation increases.

TravelNest and its team of over 40 people are advised by non-executive director Mark Logan, Skyscanner’s former COO, and the word on the street suggests they have a series of interesting announcements in the pipeline. The Doug Stephenson-founded venture was always considered “one to watch” on the Scottish startup scene and the shifting plates in the travel market have only upped its credentials in recent times. 

An edited version of this post ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 5th October 2020

Scotland's tech festivals move into full swing, by Nick Freer

ScotlandIS-run tech conference ScotSoft takes place this week and there is a great line-up of speakers including Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of AI & ISV Engagement, who joined the board of Edinburgh-headquartered Forrit earlier this year (Scottish Startup Strengthens Board of Directors, PR Newswire, 8 June 2020). One notable thing about conferences since Covid struck is how moving to a virtual platform has allowed events to draw an increasingly global number of participants and attendees. 

As Ray Bugg, Founder at technology events player DIGIT who are running the 7th annual Financial Technology Conference this week says, “DIGIT took the decision to pivot to virtual events early in the pandemic, allowing time to create an event environment that mirrors that of the physical events we’ve produced since 2013. It was imperative we created something more than ‘Death by Zoom’ that would allow delegates to network, collaborate and interact. Also, attendees are no longer constrained by geography resulting in an increased attendance from other parts of the UK and around the world. Our sponsors now have a richer environment to demonstrate their products and services and post-event analytics that are undeliverable by physical events.”

I’ve been fortunate to support Turing Fest, Startup Summit and EIE, three of Scotland’s other main tech conferences, through the years and individually and collectively they form an important part of the fabric of our tech scene, something that was emphasised in Mark Logan’s recent Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review. 

Personal highlights from these conferences, in addition to the in-conference talks and sessions, are some of the memories from the sidelines including hanging out with CodeBase founder and chairman Jamie Coleman and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in 2012, walking through Edinburgh with RocketSpace founder Duncan Logan en route to The Scotsman for an interview during Startup Summit in 2016, and a late night malt whisky session with Chris van der Kuyl and a celebrated tech journalist from Forbes following EIE17. 

EIE, Scotland’s top tech investor conference, is the one I know best - both in terms of the EIE team itself and the slew of startups who have come through the year-round programme that is now run out of the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre. In terms of the numbers, EIE has supported over 500 startups who have raised over £750 million in investment.  

EIE was launched in 2008 to bring tech founders together with investors who could help fuel their ambition and in 2020 it is comforting to see that investors continue to invest in startup talent in spite of prevailing Covid winds. Many of this year’s company cohort are on a mission to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges - around health, including Covid itself, climate, energy, agriculture, cybersecurity and robotics.

The recent Logan Review, commissioned by the Scottish Government, pinpointed the importance of conferences like EIE to the greater good of the tech scene here: “We recommend that these conferences are internationalised to showcase startups regardless of their origin country, and that a level of public finance is provided to ensure that ticket prices and pitch-entry prices are not prohibitive. The reason for doing so is to attract external investors and international industry expertise to Scotland that won’t come to see a solely domestic portfolio.” 

Having said that, investors from outside Scotland should not underplay the opportunity they have to meet Scotland-headquartered startups as history shows that we have produced homegrown ventures who have gone on to great success - startups like Skyscanner, FanDuel and Two Big Ears. Many investors’ first chance to see FanDuel, which went on to become Scotland’s first billion dollar-valued tech startup in 2015, was at EIE in 2010 and virtual reality audio startup Two Big Ears pitched to investors at EIE15 before going on to be acquired by Facebook the following year.

This year’s EIE20 takes place on Thursday 14th October, with an investor-only event with Mark Logan and a webinar for international delegates both taking place the day before.

Another Scottish tech sector conference runs on the 13th October with the inaugural edition of Ada Scotland, referencing English computer pioneer Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. Organised by the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing, the festival is aimed at improving gender balance in computing and providing a hub for girls and young women to get inspired about opportunities to study and work in computing and IT. 

An edited version of this article appeared as on op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 28th September 2020

Thinking globally and creating a strong biotech ecosystem in Scotland, guest post by Clare Wareing, Founder and CEO of Cumulus Oncology

It was good to read about ClinSpec Diagnostics’ latest investment recently, along with some positive news on Scottish biotech spinouts Pheno Therapeutics and Amphista Therapeutics earlier this year.

Like ClinSpec, Cumulus Oncology has benefited from investment by St Andrews-based investment firm EOS Advisory. EOS has a similar philosophy to ourselves and understand the impact that investment can have when ambitions are aligned.

We founded Cumulus in 2017 to create spin-out companies that will work to develop anti-cancer therapies. We aim to fast-track treatments into clinical trials for cancer types that don’t respond well to existing options.

While our business model is well developed in the US, we are leading the way in Europe. Having spent three years carefully curating a high-calibre team and building a portfolio of oncology asset-centric spin-out companies, we are now poised to scale the business and are excited about doing this from a base in Edinburgh.

Specialist life science venture capital (VC) investors really see the value of the European biotech sector where year-on-year increases in venture financing led to record investment levels of $3.3bn in 2019.

Back in 2012, my clinical research organisation (CRO) Nexus Oncology was acquired by the larger US CRO Ockham after I had spent a decade building the company to a headcount of over 120 and revenues of almost £10 million. This time around, we want to focus on therapeutics rather than services and create something that is both highly valuable and scalable. We want to be one of the next big success stories on the Scottish biotech scene, creating a sustainable business for the future.

Last week, we demonstrated our intentions by co-founding our latest biotech spin-out, Modulus Oncology alongside a first rate scientific team from the University of Sheffield. Modulus plans to fast track its lead asset into clinical development within two years. Myself and Cumulus co-founder and chair Alan Wise have joined Modulus’s leadership team in line with our modus operandi at Cumulus.

Next month, we will be announcing the appointment of a number of high profile industry figures to our advisory board and we plan to hire more people into our team over the next 12 months. We are fortunate to have a number of world-class universities on our doorstep and this will help us to grow critical mass for the sector here.

The life sciences ecosystem in Scotland is a very supportive one with access to grant funding for early stage companies as well as co-funding opportunities. This has helped create some of the impressive exits we have seen in recent years. The entrepreneurs who have been there and done it foster the next wave of new companies and create a strong biotech ecosystem for Scotland.

Scotland has an excellent base of early stage investors but for the larger investment rounds needed to scale biotech companies, particularly as they reach the clinical stage of testing, we have to look to larger VC funds in London and Europe - though Epidarex Capital, with offices in Edinburgh as well as the US, is a notable exception.

Working in the biopharmaceutical sector has taught me that you always need to think globally and, in a science-based industry sector, you need to base decisions on robust data. A strong understanding of market potential, a clear picture of the opportunity to improve patient outcomes and last, but not least, creating value for stakeholders are all key factors in the biotech sector.

For me, the most important lessons learned from scaling a life sciences service company include: always working with people you respect; listening well and learning from those that have done it before; never losing sight of your purpose and acknowledging that you need different skill sets at different stages of growth so be sure to bring in the right people at the right time to scale the business. Most of all though, love what you do, as passion and drive are the key to seeing you through difficult times.

While Covid has not impacted Cumulus in any significant way, it has been detrimental to the cancer research sector in general; cancer charities have lost income and recruitment into clinical trials faltered. So the sooner we can return to pre-Covid activity the better it will be for all in the cancer research community.

An edited version of this blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 21st September 2020

Mapping out Scotland's games sector, guest post by Brian Baglow, Founder, Scottish Games Network

Most people know two things about the videogames industry in Scotland: a) we have one, and b) it made Grand Theft Auto didn’t it?

If pushed, they might add it ‘punches above its weight’. 

Combine that with a general sense that the globally videogames are doing rather well gives a general sense that Scotland’s video games sector is probably getting on with being quietly successful. 

I’m not sure that’s the case. From some recent informal research, despite the global uptick in gaming, some of the industry here in Scotland may be struggling. 

To start with, it looks like the number of companies actually developing games has shrunk. Since 2016 it looks like we’ve lost around 65% of our developers (From 115 in 2016, to around 40 today,) despite the global games market growing.

Is that worrying? It could be. 

The problem is that the videogames industry evolves fast. Not just with new consoles, but with whole new classes of device, business models, audiences and entirely different kinds of experience. Maybe things have just shifted?

Back in the 90s, when I joined the industry as a writer on the original Grand Theft Auto, making videogames was a major undertaking. You needed large teams and lots of time and money. To get your game released you needed a publisher, who could get the game manufactured on disks or cartridges (ask your parents) for dedicated videogames consoles. 

Contrast this with today’s market. Games are ubiquitous. Every device with a screen and a processor, from smartphones to smart fridges, now play games. Most are ‘non-dedicated’ i.e. their primary function is something other than gaming. This has shifted the audience for games quite profoundly.

The games engines used by the world's largest companies, are now freely available to everyone. ‘Applied’ games bring tools, technologies and techniques from videogames to sectors such as film, television, education, healthcare, tourism and the workplace. 

Making games can now be done by individuals or small teams. Hobbyists and part-time developers are common. Large studios are now the exception rather than the rule.

Esports (playing games competitively at a professional level) has hit Scotland, along with  massive growth of streaming games on Twitch and YouTube

The problem is, we just don’t know how big Scotland’s games industry is. We don’t know where it’s based or what it’s composed of. We’ve no visibility of freelancers, or of the actual games being released. It’s never been mapped. The information we do have is inconsistent, out of date, or focused on old definitions of ‘real games’. 

From what we do know, it seems like we should be doing better. We now have six universities and almost every college across Scotland now offering games courses. Despite this we’re not seeing many new startups. Very few games companies appear in the incubators, accelerators, competitions or innovation centres across Scotland. 

Why are we losing so many development studios? If new employers are not coming through then where are our graduates going? Are we really struggling as badly as it seems?

Good questions. Thankfully there is a way forward.

Since 2004 I‘ve run the Scottish Games Network (www.scottishgames.net), which carries news and updates from everyone involved in the games sector. In July I was awarded a ‘Connected Innovator’ grant, as an industry expert, which will enable me to map Scotland’s games sector, in all its weird unknown glory. 

The games industry has never really considered itself part of the whole ’tech sector’, nor really as part of the wider creative industries. As the ground-breaking Logan Review pointed out, we’re all part of a larger, interconnected ecosystem. If we want to build a better, more collaborative digital future, then games and interactive media should be a significant part of that. 

Mapping the industry in Scotland is an important first step. In addition, I’m also lobbying the Scottish government and public sector organisations to support the creation of a videogames industry cluster. 

We are justifiably proud of our videogaming legacy. From Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, to the world’s first games degree course, Scotland’s games industry has a strong cultural heritage. 

To echo the Logan Review, our challenge in a rapidly evolving and disruptive global market is to make Scotland a place where the next tech unicorn is as likely to be a games studio, as a fintech, cyber or data company. 

Wish me luck.

An edited version of this blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 14th September 2020

Searching for Scotland's next Skyscanner, by Nick Freer

I handled the Skyscanner press announcement around Mark Logan’s appointment as the travel search site’s chief operating officer in April 2012.  At that time, Skyscanner was on a flight path to global domination and was in full on scale-up mode.  Six months previously, Skyscanner had opened its first international office in Singapore to capitalise on strong growth in Asia-Pacific and CEO Gareth Williams had stated his ambition for the fledgling venture he co-founded a decade before to become Scotland’s first billion dollar valued technology company.  As the saying goes, the rest is history.

Of course, a lot of water passed under the bridge over the following years and insiders agree that Logan played a key role in preparing the ground for Skyscanner to really take off.  He helped the business become investor-ready ahead of Silicon Valley heavyweight Sequoia investing in 2013, crystalising that unicorn status. 

In an interview with a national newspaper in 2018, Logan expressed his view that while Skyscanner may be unique, it is also replicable.  He then tempered this remark by saying Scotland requires hundreds of good tech start-ups to grow one unicorn. 

Last week, Logan’s Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review, commissioned by Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, was released to a considerable amount of acclaim across the Scottish tech scene.  As one of the senior team from CodeBase tweeted out on the day, which seemed to capture the overall response to the report, “Brilliant to see a coherent narrative forming around the future of Scottish tech”.  

The Logan Review states that Scotland’s technology ecosystem has still to pass through a “tipping point” in its development, “which is the point”, the report continues, “at which the ecosystem hosts a critical mass of viable startups and scale-ups”.  Logan places emphasis on “Education and Talent”, “Infrastructure” and “Funding” and the report goes on to outline a detailed list of “interventions” which Logan says need to be implemented in their entirety unless we want to achieve what he describes as “incremental outcomes only”.  

My own take on the report is that, most importantly, they picked someone with the right kind of credentials to undertake the review.  When Skyscanner was sold to Ctrip for £1.4 billion in 2016, which was Scotland’s largest ever tech exit, Logan exited Skyscanner but decided to stick around and stay involved in the country’s tech ecosystem (I’m guessing retiring to a desert island and sipping piña coladas was another option).  He has founded a Glasgow-based programme to mentor software entrepreneurs, modelled on a Stanford University equivalent and advised a series of Scottish startups while going on to join a select number of their boards, including Care Sourcer and Swipii.

Investors looking for Scotland’s next unicorn will undoubtedly have paid close attention to the startups Logan has attached himself to.  As outlined in the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review, we are still some way off being able to say that we have a critical mass of Scotland-based startups who have a realistic chance to achieve global scale and it’s a belief that is echoed by a number of prominent VC firms I have been in touch with over the last twelve months. 

In the year before Logan joined Skyscanner, the company had already reached a strong position on the revenue front, reporting top-line growth up 75 per cent to £15.2 million for 2010.  That kind of yardstick applies to very few, if any, of the current crop of Scottish startups and scale-ups. 

A well known UK tech reporter occasionally asks me who I think will be, as she puts it, Scotland’s next Skyscanner.  My answer is usually pretty much the same - what I have heard from VC and angel investors in my network, who tech incubator CodeBase (the tech incubator supports around 400 companies who have raised over £600 million in investment) rate and startups I have got to know first-hand.  

Do I believe we can produce another Skyscanner?  For sure.  Technology investment bank GP Bullhound’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Hugh Campbell, puts its best: “There are now more than 100 billion-dollar technology companies that have come out of Europe.  As we become a more global society and economy, so the ambitions across continents have become more similar.”

An edited version of this blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Monday 31st August 2020