From Germany with love, guest post by David Scrimgeour MBE

I moved to Munich in 1990 and have never ceased being impressed by the power and scale of business and the resulting opportunities in Germany. But my UK clients – unfortunately - rarely shared my enthusiasm. However, in the last three years the German Government’s trade and investment agency GTAI has been registering a steady increase of British companies enquiring about setting up subsidiaries. What has changed and is this a trend or only a knee-jerk reaction to current trading difficulties?

2019 saw some concerned businesses making last minute efforts to rent Dutch warehouses or even establish operations there to benefit from the investor-friendly tax environment. Traditionally the Netherlands has been the first port of call for UK companies expanding to “Europe” so this cannot be seen as a new development but rather as an intensification of past practices caused by the impending border controls. What is new, though, is the extension of cross-border activity into the world’s fourth largest economy.

My decision to make a life in Germany was because of a woman from Bavaria who is now my wife. And, after thirty years, this is very definitely my first home, Scotland being our second. I have spent a chunk of this time working on projects and ideas to connect business between the two countries. Mostly, this has not been very rewarding financially, mainly because of the huge cultural differences in the way that business is done. It was the occasional exceptions and the small successes that made me keep trying - similar to playing golf when I think about it!

The number of companies from the UK expanding to Germany hit an all-time record of 185 in 2019. The main attraction now is not only accessing this market but in having a continental European operation which opens up trading opportunities across the EU. In my experience this is new, it is a strategic emphasis recognising the realities of doing business in multiple markets and, above all, taking a long-term view of business development. This appreciation of realistic timescales is absolutely key to succeeding here and it has been missing. 

Ironically perhaps, the split from the EU has caused decision-makers in companies of a certain size to consider the question: “what is our strategy for Europe?”. The result of that thought process has usually been the realisation that there is no strategy! We are currently advising a London-based online services pure play which has hit the ground running in Germany and has generated fantastic revenue from day one. Now the owners are following up with a strategic expansion of their operations in Europe from a German base. Having existing customers here is a prerequisite for establishing a subsidiary and hiring local staff.

And I am very pleased to report that we have just started to advise a great Scottish company that has been doing business here for decades and is now taking the plunge. And I am convinced that there are many more companies to follow and am very much looking forward to watching them thrive in this fantastic market.

An edited version of this post appeared in The Scotsman on Saturday 17th July 2021

Postcard from EIE21, by Nick Freer

EIE21, one of Scotland’s top tech conferences which has been connecting startups with investors since 2008, took place last week with thirty-five companies pitching for investment to investors who were beamed in virtually from across the globe.  

Kate Forbes MSP, recently appointed as Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy, and a former digital economy minister, opened proceedings with an address to conference in which she said that “tech is my most exciting portfolio” and that Scotland is “global tech’s best kept secret”.  

After a stirring start from Forbes, Scottish Enterprise’s interim CEO Linda Hanna covered growth potential, accessing markets, scaling, and picked out EIE alumnus company Cyan Forensics and ClinSpec Diagnostics as two portfolio companies who are delivering “innovative solutions to global problems” from a base in Scotland.  

Sir Ronald Cohen, chairman of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, quoted a Harvard Business School report citing 1,800 companies being responsible for around $3 trillion worth of environmental damage.  “Something is fundamentally wrong with our system”, said Cohen, adding that, “Adam Smith’s concept of the invisible hand of markets can become the invisible heart of markets” and that “the 2020s will be the decade of the ‘Impact Revolution’”.  “Transparency by companies has become a new human right”, said Sir Ronald, “both the good and the harm they create.” 

Alex Joss, a key member of the UK team at this year’s COP26, said all businesses now realise the risks of not having their “house in order” when it comes to environmental impact.  One of the fancied startups on the day, OnGen, which develops online tools for SMEs to measure their carbon footprint and save energy costs, made a timely pitch not long after Joss’s address, although ultimately the pitch of the day honours went to data protection startup ionbrurst.

Good humoured science commentator Quentin Cooper compered the fireside chat with storied entrepreneur Mike Welch, who got up at the crack of dawn in his sun-soaked office in downtown Miami.  Focusing on the arc of Welch’s career, Cooper reminded the online crowd of how Mike went from being an unemployed tyre fitter as a teenager in Liverpool to running one of the world’s largest tyre retailers, US-based Tirebuyer. 

Lesley Eccles, HelloRelish founder and previous co-founder of FanDuel, talked about her last appearance at EIE in 2016.  “We had just raised $250 million, valuing FanDuel at $1 billion, but we were battling on so many fronts behind the scenes at the time.”  Eccles continued: “The number of startup horror stories I know would scare you.  How many of us have experienced a two-month runway before you run out of cash, losing employees, a stock market crash when you’re just about to sign a term sheet.”  Eccles added: “Post-FanDuel, I spent a lot of time reflecting and processing.  What defines success for me?  I realised it’s not about making lots of money, not even about building a huge company, it’s about relationships in this short life.”  

Wellbeing and mental health in 'startup world' is one of the themes that has been examined in this year’s EIE Scottish Startup Survey, the findings of which are released next week. 

An edited version of this blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 19th June 2021

Employee power, guest post by Trickle CEO and co-founder Paul Reid

The power employees have to drive significant change within organisations is remarkable.  

Just ask Brewdog or Ted Baker, both well-known consumer brands who made headlines when former employees decided to speak up publicly in numbers, against the negative culture and way they were treated by those organisations.

Employee Activism is becoming a defining feature of the modern workplace, and it can either work for or against your organisation.

The recent open letter published by former employees of Brewdog describing an alleged “culture of fear” has shone a light on the power of employees.  

There is a shift happening from the industrial period where employees were considered “resources” and bureaucracy was invented to control them in an attempt to deliver consistent and measurable performance, to our new world where there is a greater expectation of respect and trust from employers – as well as an element of freedom to contribute, flex and be creative as people work hard to help the organisation deliver against its corporate goals.

Every day within organisations, employees are naturally and energetically talking to each other about their experience in the workplace – the good, and the bad.  This gives leaders of organisations a choice to make: whether to tune in and actively listen, engage and act on the information and suggestions being made; or to leave these conversations confined to the watercoolers, canteens or private WhatsApp groups.

The choice of actively listening and engaging with your employees leads to empowerment.  A positive force that arises from truly caring about employee experience, and being able to demonstrate that you work together with inclusivity, transparency and agility at the heart of your day-to-day operations.

Alternatively, failure to listen can lead to employee activism against the organisation.  The negative force that can arise from disengaged employees disgruntled that their wellbeing is not being actively considered or nurtured by the organisation.

Actively listening and engaging employees provides massive opportunities to work closer together - to deliver improvements to both employee experience and the performance of the organisation.  It’s a win-win.

The alternative is having far less awareness of emerging issues, and the risk that small niggles will grow into significant problems, with employees making their voices heard through leaving, negatively influencing other employees, or potentially speaking out in public against the organisation.  As we have seen, this can lead to significant brand and reputational damage.

My experience from working with organisations both large and small over the last 25 years, is that to really thrive and perform at an optimum level, it is crucial to establish a culture where people are encouraged to speak up, engage and improve together every day.  

Employees are going to talk regardless – it’s natural.  Harnessing these conversations and improvement opportunities internally is surely far preferable to employees eventually speaking out against the organisation via the numerous public-facing platforms that are readily accessible to us all.

Consumers increasingly make spending choices based on brand reputation, purpose and social impact, so now more than ever its key to embrace employee empowerment – to use their expertise and passion to help your organisation optimise its performance, grow and adapt to the relentless pace of change that has become normal in our modern world.

An edited version of this blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 26th June

Scots gambit to get kids into chess, by Nick Freer

The oldest surviving complete chess sets date back to the 12th century and were found on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland and, in slightly more recent times in 1882, the Edinburgh Chess Club became not only the oldest chess club in Scotland but one of the oldest clubs in the world. 

While Scotland has a clear history of playing the game, arguably chess has lost its way in this country against its continuing popularity in many parts of the world.  Enter stage left Gareth Williams and Andrew Green, Williams the co-founder and longtime CEO of online travel site Skyscanner and Green the nation’s only full-time chess coach.  

Today, the online chess tournament being staged by Green with the backing of Williams will see over 600 Scots kids from Dingwall to Dubai play in competition for prizes totalling £10,000, the largest prize fund of its kind anywhere in the UK.  

The aim of the game, so to speak, is to get more kids into playing chess  in this country.  Securing government funding would help. Most European countries receive public funding for chess in schools and the lack of funding is one of the factors at the root of the problem in Scotland.  

The benefits of the game to kids are well proven.  Research points to the educational benefits of chess, including around cognitive and emotional skills, maths and problem-solving.  And with chess increasingly played in an online environment without language barriers, it’s never been easier or cheaper to get into the game - no need to keep replacing the chess sets in the school cupboards when a bishop and a few pawns go missing. 

From a campaign point of view, it has been great to work with Andrew, Gareth and the team to get the story out there and featured in the national media.  The mainstream UK press hasn’t taken much of an interest in the game, to the extent that when the World Chess Championship took place in London in 2018 there was relatively little coverage of the event. 

We brought in social media agency Sunshine Communications to support the campaign, and the Jenny Emslie-led outfit who have offices in Edinburgh and London have done a great job of amplifying the story via social channels. 

Unsurprisingly, the kids have been the real stars of the show, not least a 10-year-old from Edinburgh who has been putting fabled Grandmasters to the sword in competition play.  On a personal level, I was pleased to get our daughter into playing the game under the expert tutelage of Andrew Green himself.  With kids spending so much time on devices these days, chess can certainly be seen as ‘good gaming’ in comparison to many of the so-called shoot ‘em up games available online.  

Some say The Queen’s Gambit has helped to put chess back on the map, and perhaps the Netflix series has made chess cool to those who didn’t previously see it in this light, but it’s great to see Andrew Green and Gareth Williams put real building blocks in place in the hope that they can help to grow the game here.

An edited version of this blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 12th June 2021  

Transforming and idea into a successful venture is hard, guest blog by Varun Nair, co-founder of Two Big Ears and former Head of AR/VR Audio Software at Facebook

Transforming an idea into a successful venture is hard. It takes tremendous energy, constant iteration from failure, and good timing. In 2013, I co-founded Two Big Ears, a company that developed audio technology for virtual reality. Facebook acquired it a few years later and took me on a journey to Silicon Valley and back. 

In 2011, I moved from India to study at the University of Edinburgh. That is where, by chance, I met Abesh Thakur, my co-founder. We both had taken a break from our careers in India to study and were keen to try something new.

Inspired by our work at the University, we formed an audio-focused games company. While we juggled jobs and built prototypes, we realised we were better technologists than game designers. We did not know where to start and found support around us. University pitching competitions helped us communicate complex ideas and connect with the ecosystem. Help was available at every turn, from office facilities to immigration advice. Raising investment helped focus all our time on the business. 

It took us many months, more prototypes, countless conversations, and lots of dead ends to end up targeting the virtual reality market. Everything then became about making it work. A few years later the opportunity of an acquisition was a surprise, but not to the people around us. The timing was critical, the virtual reality market was taking off and even a difference of a year would have resulted in a different outcome.

In hindsight, the events stack up to form a good narrative, but building a workable business is a winding path with unforeseeable pitfalls. An overnight success is always many years in the making and requires a strong support network. Our relationships – with customers, competitors, the local ecosystem – made the biggest difference. Constantly measuring the market and relentless focus on customer happiness maximised our chances.

The lessons we picked up then were critical in a large company. Building teams that make technology for billions of people required new skills, but the startup experience of putting people relationships and experiences first made all the difference.

I recently moved back to Edinburgh to start new ventures. While it is getting easier to start a company outside of large clusters like Silicon Valley, these clusters have a lot going for them: strong competition, a high bar for success, and access to capital. While Edinburgh is not yet a large ecosystem, the ingredients for growth exist and there has been significant progress. There is more diversity in the kinds of businesses and the people behind them. Getting to a point of predictable success also requires the ecosystem to learn from failures. Failure builds up a remarkable reserve of creativity and strength. Fail early and often, apply those learnings quickly, and try again. 

In 2013, the thought of founding a company, having it acquired, and working in one of the largest tech companies seemed impossible. The journey of a startup can be daunting and filled with failures, but also with opportunities to learn and grow. It takes constant iteration and lots of help, yet, it is not impossible.

An edited version of this blog appeared in The Scotsman on Saturday 15th May 2021

A game-changer for Scottish-European trade, by David Scrimgeour MBE, formerly the Scottish Government’s investment representative in Germany and now working as an energy consultant in Munich

For British companies and economic development agencies the world of trade and investment with Continental Europe has changed dramatically since the beginning of 2021. Unfortunately, there is little or no awareness in the UK of the significance of these changes. For Scotland, with its claim to being more pro-European than the other Island nations, this will mean a radical change of mindset if cross-border business activity with mainland Europe is to be maintained. And we must become much more proactive in promoting Scottish strengths.

As a Germany-based consultancy we have, over the years, organised numerous events and trade missions here for Scottish organisations. In Spring last year we were planning a multi-sector trade mission from the Highlands to Munich which then had to be postponed due to the pandemic. Recently, I spoke with my contacts at Munich Chamber of Commerce - Europe’s second-largest Chamber after Paris with over 400,000 member companies – about the possibility of organising the mission this year or next. The answer was clear: “keine Chance” - no chance.

Over the last five years since the Brexit referendum most German companies with business interests in the UK have been preparing for an unknown outcome and investing time, money and human resources. BMW, for example, had 200 permanent staff working for years on scenario planning. This uncertainty impacted heavily on trade between the UK and Germany. Between 2015 and 2020 exports from Germany to the UK decreased by €22 billion (£19 bn) ie from €89bn to €67bn, a drop of twenty-five per cent.

It is vital that we realise that this massive loss of revenue for tens of thousands of German companies has dealt a powerful blow to trust in the UK as a reliable business partner and safe location for investment. The chambers of commerce in Germany also have a huge and continuing workload of enquiries from their member companies about trading with the UK, hence the reaction of the Munich Chamber.

A new economic development strategy is urgently necessary if Scotland will continue to benefit from business with Germany. We need to identify those future opportunities where the impacts of the UK’s exit from the EU are less significant and where our business partners also see potential for growth. 

I was approached recently by the Baden-Württemberg Government on behalf of a regional automotive cluster seeking contact with the Aberdeen Region. The German automotive industry is being forced by EU legislation to reduce carbon emissions and is exploring the use of green hydrogen as a fuel. The cluster managers knew about Aberdeen’s expertise in mobility applications for hydrogen and are keen to share knowledge and to develop joint projects, also with EU funding.

Another field which has great potential is the space industry. Bavaria is one of the leading space clusters in Europe and Scotland offers satellite manufacture, satellite launch capability as well as downstream data services. A trade mission on space would, I believe, be welcomed with open arms by our Bavarian friends.

An edited version of this blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 8th May 2021

Young people spark retail investing revolution by Iona Bain, co-founder of Young Money Agency and author of Own It! How our generation can invest our way to a better future

Over the past year, we have seen nothing short of a retail investing revolution. Investing platforms have reported record numbers of new customers, with the average age of investors edging ever-downwards. Young people are discovering the world of investing for the first time, and what an entrance they’re making. Whether it’s fighting the hedge funds in the U.S. or driving the green investing agenda closer to home, our generation is shaping stock-market dynamics in a very real way.

 Millennials and gen Z are often lauded as more socially and environmentally conscious investors, at least in comparison to older people. But we’re no angels. The data suggests we’re increasingly attracted to so-called ‘meme stocks’ like Tesla, with its questionable governance, and energy-intensive cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. 

 Many young people eschew traditional advice like ‘spread your risks’, ‘invest for the long term’ and ‘look at the fundamentals’. They’re liable to jump on bandwagons, triggered by social media’s lightning speed and enfants terrible like Elon Musk, who can make or break fortunes with a tweet. Research by the Financial Conduct Authority last month found beginner investors are far more likely to follow trends, their gut feeling and cocky influencers, rather than conventional investing wisdom.

 The traditional financial sector is starting to worry that the next generation is being lost to get-rich-quick schemes, and a gambling mentality. I share that concern. But we need to understand the young investing phenomenon, rather than rush to judgement.

 Firstly, who can blame young people for chasing high returns? Given the rough economic deal they had even before Covid came along, with quantitative easing enriching older, home-owning citizens at the expense of young renters, no wonder young people look at dire savings rates and want to do better. They feel investing offers a chance to grow their money in real terms. Their instinct is spot-on – they just need to channel it in a more sensible way.

 And to be fair, we don’t teach young people about investing and pensions. That’s why I wrote my new book – to educate a generation curious about the stock-market. Otherwise, young people, priced out of financial advice, will simply go online to get their information, often from snake oil salesmen telling them what they want to hear.

 We will all make mistakes in our investing journey. What matters is learning from them. But we also need to equip young people with the information that will enable them to spot scams and evolve into patient, thoughtful investors. 

If you’re starting out, look for ways to manage your risks, such as through diversification. Only invest directly in companies if you can commit to the research. Once you have put together your portfolio, leave it alone, save for some rebalancing and profit-taking here and there. If something sounds too good to be true, it is.

 Learn how to manage your investing brain. Over-trading, exposure to one or two volatile assets, panic when markets fall…all this can lead to serious problems, both financial and mental. Research has shown traders who experience big losses early in their career have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

 The young investing revolution is to be welcomed. But we need to give young people better help and guidance so they don’t have to learn about the realities of investing the hard way.

 This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 1st May 2021

Fledgling startups take flight, by Nick Freer

The EIE team has been running Scotland’s top tech investor programme since 2008, highlighted every year by a conference that brings investors to Edinburgh from across the globe.  On the day, Thursday 10th June this year, 36 companies will pitch for investment from seed level to later stage funding. 

We have had the privilege of supporting the EIE guys for a number of years, and there have been so many great memories along the way.  You get to see early stage companies at close quarters, some of whom end up going on to great success.  Often, the companies are in what can be described as a fledgling stage - and you wonder if they will ever take flight.

At EIE in 2016, FanDuel co-founder Lesley Eccles recalled how the founding team engaged with over a hundred investors before one, venture capital firm Pentech, committed to back the company alongside the Scottish Investment Bank.  The rest of FanDuel’s story is well documented, including around the fantasy sports startup achieving a $1 billion valuation, or unicorn status, in 2015.  

A year before, in August of 2014, EIE ran an event in Glasgow at Team Scotland’s headquarters when the Commonwealth Games were taking place in the city.  I can still remember the sweltering heat outside and the windows wide open to let in air.  One of the twelve companies featured on the day was Two Big Ears, founded by University of Edinburgh graduates Varun Nair and Abesh Thakur. 

Varun and Abesh had founded the company eighteen months previously, and while Two Big Ears’ audio technology software for virtual reality games had only been launched three months before, it was already at the forefront of its field and big tech companies in the US were starting to take notice.  In 2016, Facebook acquired Two Big Ears and Varun and Abesh moved from a small office above a Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh to Facebook’s Frank Gehry-designed headquarters in Menlo Park, California.  

I caught up with Varun, who recently returned to Edinburgh, last week and I look forward to him writing about the Two Big Ears journey in this column in the coming weeks.  

The EIE21 Scottish Startup Survey, now in its fifth year, was launched this week and for the first time the survey is open to startups outside of the EIE alumni network.  This year, the survey asks startup founders questions around how they have faced up to the pandemic, new ways of working, if funding plans have been affected, what kind of government support has been accessed, Brexit, hiring strategies, measures put in place to deal with wellbeing, physical and mental health during remote working, and plans to return to the office.  

When we spoke to Amiqus CEO and founder Callum Murray as we were pulling the survey together, Callum pointed out that after the year that has just passed, protecting your team as a startup founder has perhaps never been so important.  Yes, Murray remarked, startups are inherently about growth, but sometimes you need to push the pause button when people feel under pressure.  

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 24th April 2021

Empathy isn't just about being nice, it should be a stone-cold business strategy, by Andy MacMillan, CEO, UserTesting

According to a recent Washington Post story, more than 2,000 scientific papers were published about empathy in 2019—just one sign of empathy’s emergence as one of the hottest topics of conversation in society.

We’ve all talked so much about empathy in recent years for a simple reason: We’re afraid we’re losing it. Economic disparity, political divisions, and technological isolation have all taken a toll on our sense of connection and caring.

The pandemic, social unrest, and other sources of extreme stress in the last year are raising urgent new questions about how we can be more compassionate toward and understanding of each other.

For businesses, empathy seems to have become not just a value but a paradigm governing nearly every aspect of the operation, from marketing strategy to employee engagement to corporate citizenship.

That’s certainly a very positive trend. But as empathy has come to indicate so many things to so many people—one of the scientific papers I mentioned earlier noted 43 different definitions of the term—I’m wondering if its meaning is becoming muddled.

There are many flavors of empathy in the world, and one that particularly excites me is its relevance in a business context—i.e. how empathy can be brought to bear to make customers’ lives better and easier.

As UserTesting’s CEO (and I think of that acronym as standing for both “chief executive officer” and “chief empathy officer”), I believe empathy is critical to organizations serving their customers better through a deep, emotional, human understanding of their needs and wants, their likes and dislikes. It’s about complementing the abundance of data in the workplace with the realization that our employees, our customers, and our stakeholders are actually people.

A perfect storm of factors is making it absolutely necessary that companies be able to put themselves in customers’ shoes and experience their products and services as their audience does.

One, the internet has given consumers more information, choices, and easy access to competitors than ever before in history.

Two, social media has become word-of-mouth on steroids for customers airing their experiences with a brand, good or bad. 

Three, digital commerce tends to create distance between companies and their customers’ actual experience, making it easy to lose sight of the human beings involved.

All of this demands that businesses must do more than try to be empathetic to customers—they must make empathy a real business strategy.

That involves going beyond guessing at customers’ attitudes or relying on data analytics and surveys to try to extract insights. It means seeking out human insights to gain non-numerical, first-hand knowledge of customers’ real emotions, goals, and behavior. UserTesting helps companies do that.

In a way, empathy means having enough respect for customers to make the extra effort to get inside their heads, and then, in every single interaction, to deliver what they want.

This kind of empathy should be every company’s true north where customers are concerned.

This blog ran as on op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 10th April 2021

A data-led approach to people and performance, by Andragogy.co managing director Anneli Ritari-Stewart

Businesses, like top performing athletes, need the sense of excitement and hope that comes from having a clear route to achieving their goals.

Last year, I won my first ever physique competition through a meticulous approach to training. I found hope and mental resilience by improving and developing despite the pandemic. 

It helped me drive growth for Andragogy.co, an educational technology and managed learning business. We developed partnerships with the Marketing Society Scotland and the Institute of Data and Marketing (IDM) to help their members measure and benchmark skills with our Digital IQ assessment. 

I found the start of this year challenging and my sports performance suffered. Home-schooling while working is like trying to play tennis and football at the same time. A sense of hopelessness began to affect me. I was still exercising but not effectively training.

I found it tough because I felt stuck - and not just in the house. My progress had stalled because I had no specific, measurable plan to address the areas I needed to improve.

In a similar way, businesses are just as stuck. Most companies provide training. However, research shows that most are not addressing an actual measured skills gap.

Leaders should ask themselves; do we know what our skills gap looks like?

Endless Zoom meetings are putting more pressure on time than ever before. Training must be effective to ensure people spend their valuable time where it matters the most. 

I believe there are strong parallels between how we reach peak performance in sport and in business. It is crucial we provide people with data informed plans to help identify their unique opportunities to grow. 

It has been a privilege to work with progressive leaders like Calum Sutherland, Digital Marketing Performance Lead at NatWest Group who found that “Digital IQ provided valuable insights for how to best nurture my team and ensure everyone is on their optimal learning path.”

Susie Logan, Chief Marketing Officer at Royal London is another shining example of leading from the front.  The message “we are on a digital journey together” hit home when everyone, including the leadership team took the assessment. The project saw a 94% participation rate which provided a detailed overview of capabilities and areas that needed upskilling.    

Interestingly, before Digital IQ participants wanted training in areas where they were already strong. However, afterwards they wanted it in areas where they needed it to perform in their role. 

Skills assessment is just the starting point. The crucial work is the training. Experts, AI powered tutors, and gamification make learning highly effective. Yard Digital saw knowledge increase by 44% as their digital marketing team reached peak performance in just five months. 

My next goal is the British Masters Powerlifting Championships this summer. My training is addressing my weak points and builds strength to maximise my chances of performing. This has given me a sense of excitement and hope again.

Now is the time for empathetic leaders to implement a data informed approach and lead by example to cement a culture of learning. That will drive business performance. More importantly, it will provide people with a sense of excitement and hope too. 

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 3rd April 2021

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