Mark Logan – Scotland’s outgoing chief entrepreneur – has outlined why national tech support programmes are insufficient to create globally significant companies.
The former Skyscanner executive insists a new proposal to build a ‘Deeptech Supercluster’ will provide a real edge in advanced manufacturing techniques, which is a growing requirement for tech firms.
Whilst schemes like the Scottish Government’s £42 million Techscaler programme and others are helping “pure software” companies grow, there is a lack of university spinouts reaching their natural scale, many of which depend on more than just programming skills and resources.
He has observed that for that to change, there needs to be a recognition that many tech companies – particular with the advance of robotics, the space sector and internet of things (IoT) – have a manufacturing requirement. Other emergent industries including pharmaceuticals, biotech, nanotechnology and compound semiconductor manufacture could also benefit.
Many of Scotland’s universities are already heavily involved in these industries but don’t currently have a natural outlet for prototyping or advanced manufacturing facilities. For that to change, Logan is spearheading a new initiative to bring together some of Scotland’s most cutting-edge research and development facilities under one umbrella.
Logan, who recently stepped down from his role as chief entrepreneurial adviser to the Scottish Government, after a political row over his remuneration, was speaking at Futurescot’s Digital Glasgow conference at Strathclyde University’s Technology & Innovation Centre yesterday.
He said: “Because we don’t have clearly expressed pathways in Scotland today for spinouts to move from origination and prototyping through to advanced manufacture, it tends to cause them either not to get formed in the first place – so, we’re probably reducing our spinout creation rate because of that – or it causes them to up sticks and move somewhere else.
“So that’s where the idea of creating some kind of ‘national manufacturing accelerator’ comes from. That’s not an official title, it’s just the description, and the idea here is that you could graduate from, say, the [National] Robotarium and set up a production line somewhere with a great deal of support to allow you to move to limited scale manufacture.
“This is important because it’s maybe building your first 1,000 versions of your product, or examples of your product, refining that process, refining the product itself, so you can verify product market fit, but also, crucially, making the startup more investible, because you’re de-risking the startup.”
The formal pathway has not been fully agreed, but Logan described it as being a ‘phased approach’, with support coming from Scottish Enterprise to bring the partners together into a cluster. The first iteration will be at the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District in Renfrewshire, which is home to a major NMIS advanced manufacturing demonstrator and consulting site as well as the Medicine Manufacturing Innovation Centre, the Oligonucleotides Innovation Centre, with the Advanced Forming Research Centre (also part of NMIS) nearby.
Logan says the intention is to prove this phase can work before moving onto others.
“What that’s doing is meaning that we take all our assets and our expertise, and resources, and combine them into something much bigger,” added Logan.
“It’s about leveraging what we have. We have some amazing investments in manufacturing in the country today, and probably a lot of people aren’t quite aware of them. They were not put in place to stimulate startup activity, per se, but they may be demonstrators of advanced technologies or consultancy resources, etc, but we can use them for this project.”
And it would be solving a big problem. According to the QS World Rankings, Scotland has per capita the strongest concentration of world-class universities anywhere on earth. But since 2011, despite producing around 232 spinout companies, not many have gone on to become truly international in scale, making a global impact. Whilst Techscaler and other schemes are trying to remedy that, Logan says we need to do more.
“So, that’s a great piece of infrastructure, and it’s not the only piece we have in the country. We have some other fantastic examples…but if you put that in the context of the question about where are our spinouts at scale, then you can start to see why this is necessary, but it’s not sufficient.”
Proposing advanced manufacturing as the ‘missing’ infrastructure layer, the scheme will allow startups to access the cluster as a ‘service’ without needing to hire the people or acquire the skills directly themselves – and then to get assistance setting up a manufacturing line.
He added: “And we’re also going to create a voucher scheme so that startups can access contract manufacturers and bring in additional expertise or outsource additional elements. And also, finally, we’re going to integrate all of this with existing scaleup services to create a network that’s more than the sum of its parts.
He gave a hypothetical example of a startup based at the National Robotarium, Heriot-Watt university’s £23 million facility on its campus in Edinburgh.
“Without having to spend £5 million on a facility to set up a production line, you could use this facility without hiring very expensive expertise into your business at this stage. You might hire it later, but at this stage you could get the skills to enable you to make that production line work and be effective, and in doing that, you’re getting further on than you would have done with less investment required, so that you’re then more investible later because you just derisk the proposition to outside investors.”
Logan said to complete the first phase of the Deeptech Supercluster, Scottish Enterprise is investing some of its own budget in the scheme, but there are also plans to use that money to leverage further investment from outside Scotland, from the UK and further afield. The first phase is likely to create a robotics manufacturing pathway supported by the National Robotarium, he said.
“Works has begun on the other pathways, but obviously we’ll bring that forward in time, depending on how things go. We’re finding our way across the river stone by stone,” he said.
