Scotland’s Enterprising and Innovative Tech Future

Scotland’s Enterprising and Innovative Tech Future

For a small country, Scotland has a beating heart of innovation and enterprise. The country is known around the world for its inventors and enterprising spirit. But, at the core of this, is a commitment to education at all levels, and in breaking down the barriers in the access to education.

Scotland, too, has some of the most beautiful and livable cities in the world, and where you’ll find green spaces abound. But, our future economies will be built on attracting (and keeping) talent, and in building companies of scale. If a country fails to do these things, it will have little control over its economic development — and create a sustainable economy.

And, so, the Scottish Government are investing in the future with the announcement of CodeBase being awarded £42 million to establish seven new tech scaler hubs across Scotland. All three of our highly successful spin-outs — Zonefox, Symphonic and Cyacomb — have all grown within the CodeBase infrastructure, so it is good to see its core innovation infrastructure being scaled across Scotland. It is all part of Mark Logan’s 2020 Scottish Tech Ecosystem Review, and which called for a scale-up of the pipeline for innovation, along with an investment in the teaching of computer science at school.

Creating the funnel

Mark’s enterprise model is to create a large enough funnel that will allow at least one tech unicorn — a $1 billion company — to grow within a given time period. This requires a big enough supply from the earlier stages — to allow for failures and acquisitions:

In terms of creating high-impact and high-growth companies, there is often a time window where a small intervention — such as market success and focus or the winning of a research contract — can quickly accelerate a spin-out/start-up:

For this Mark proposed a focus on education (support for every stage of the growth process); infrastructure (the co-location of innovators, investors and entrepreneurs — a “marketplace”); and funding (stimulating investment and enabling grant funding). For the education funnel, Mark envisioned that there would be a key focus on leadership, strategy and Internet economy operations:

And universities will play a core role in this ecosystem, especially in generating and supporting new ideas from their students, and in creating impact from their research:

The best universities view industrial collaboration in general, and start-up facilitation in particular, as equally important to their other missions of teaching and research. They understand that it is difficult to be genuinely world-class in teaching and research without being world-class in industrial liaison and entrepreneurial support. With any of these missing the others are diminished.

Creating the Computer Scientists

Mark wants Scotland to produce a world-class technology innovation infrastructure, but how can you, when you switch so many kids off computer science at such an early age? Mark nails his viewpoints straight, and just comes right out and says it as it is:

And then focuses on the 80–90% male dominance:

And, of course, we are just not telling our kids that the jobs of the future will involve software, cybersecurity and data science:

And it’s not a big secret but the level that those with a Computer Science qualification at school get to, often means that we just teach the basics again:

And his conclusion in the report was:

that Computing Science should be considered as equal to other sciences or mathematics in the school curriculum.

Creating social architects

A key part of the investment must be to create an environment and culture where innovation thrives. Prof Hill, I think, outlines innovation best in this article, where she analyses why some companies are so successful at it, and others barely seem to innovate.

One viewpoint she pushes forward is that leadership matters greatly, but that it is not the core of building an organisation that innovates on a regular basis. The argument basically follows the line that just because you have a well-funded R&D department, with a great leader, doesn’t mean you’ll have a pipeline of great innovations.

She analysed some of the best innovators and found they were dispersed across a wide range of organisation types, from those that are seen as hotbeds of innovation to less traditional ones, such as those in government departments. From our point of view, we see this, and have seen that some of the best innovators have come across are those in the public sector, such as in law enforcement and health care. They are people who can spot that the existing way is just not working and that it can be improved in some way.

The individuals she studied showed that it was less about getting people to follow the leader, and more about getting people to co-create the idea, and the leaders involved were capable of providing vision, even though they did not see that as their main role.

Another interesting viewpoint is that these leaders are basically:

Social architects

and who create groups — or communities — which were willing and able to innovate. As a technical person, I relate fully to this and believe that getting others on board with a vision is key, but the ability to execute the idea is also key. Thus having the correct partnerships and the technical skills to execute the vision is a fundamental factor in getting an innovation to succeed.

I think few people have really crystalised viewpoints of innovation as she has:

“Innovation is a journey, a collaborative problem-solving process, where discoveries happen through a process of trial and error, false starts, and even mistakes. The process can be exhilarating. But as many of us know all too well, it can also be downright scary”

I have highlighted the collaborative and problem-solving bit as this can often be a challenge for many companies, as their innovation must often be shared with others, either in the organisation or externally.

She then pinpoints that innovation is crafted by the hands of many, and not from a single genius, and where the leader is able to unleash talent in order to enact collective genius. For the organisation, she defined three cultural attributes to foster innovation: reactive abrasion; creative agility; and creative resolution.

Reactive abrasion is creating an environment which supports discourse and debate, and where people listen to ideas, and where breakthroughs cannot thrive where there is no diversity of thought or conflict. This is the type of environment that academia aims to create, where there are different viewpoints on topics, and where they are critically appraised.

In a university, the innovation environment should thrive on reactive abrasion, but often the environment becomes rather sanitized, where critical thoughts and conflict are suppressed, or where new ideas are not followed through. She thus, alongside a diversity of thought and conflict, defines a culture of listening, inquiry and advocacy.

Her second attribute is creative agility, which involves rapidly developing, experimenting, and changing. This, she defines, involves both a scientific process and an artistic process. You then act — and not plan. This goes against many business models, where the first thing you are asked for is your Gantt Chart, and your business plan, along with your five-year financial forecast. Often these documents are great works of fiction that George Orwell would be proud of.

In innovation, you often have to create small prototypes and run small-scale experiments in order to get the results that can demonstrate the potential. We learnt early on that we often had to short-circuit the design phase for a quick proof-of-concept, and then demonstrate it. In this way, people can see what the innovation will look like, and outline, with the results, how it will improve things.

She defines that some deep thinking goes on at this phase. In some of the projects that we have been involved with we have often collaborated with organisations with large development teams, with fully defined processes for their builds, but, in the end, we’ve ended up with something which really makes an impact, as, early on, we started to build something that we could experiment with, and get early results.

Finally, she defines creative resolution, which again allows debate to thrive, where there is no one person that dominates, and where everyone in the team has the opportunity to influence the focus. It thus focuses on alternative approaches and then appraising them as things develop. She outlines that it is important for the environment to be created where the individuals involved are open to contributing their ideas, and multiple approaches can be taken.

Getting everyone on-side

Linda defines that the leadership element is there to keep the innovation progressing, otherwise, it is likely to run out of stream, and where some internal forces within a group will often push against the developments. A resistance of change is often common in some organisations, especially in the public sector, and can try to slow down or block new innovations (often it is the change of roles that a new innovation will bring that will suppress change — “wouldn’t it replace someone’s job?” is a common statement).

She defines that the three things that leadership should thus focus on are: common purpose; shared values; and mutual rules of engagement. With a common purpose, everyone in the team knows what the end goal looks like, and is ready to cope with problems, conflict and tension that happens along the way. For the team, the pain of the innovation is worth it in the end, in that they achieve the end goal. Few, only the way, will actually know what the end goal looks like, but everyone knows what a good endpoint will be.

For shared values, the team must share a vision and have four key values of: bold ambition; collaboration; learning; and responsibility. A team should then be able to articulate what these are, and what they stand for when they meet someone for the first time. They should also be able to give an elevator pitch and say something like … “We want to share information around the risks to patients, but preserve their rights to privacy”. Each person in the team should share this and know exactly what the aims of the vision are. Each part of the innovation then just takes them along part of the route.

Finally, she defines mutual rules of engagement, which defines who the team will work together, and where their leader makes sure that everyone in the team are comfortable with their role, and where they:

contribute ideas, they cultivate mutual trust, respect and influence (words easier to say than practice)

Linda defines that leaders pay great attention to how people think and she believes that they get people to question everything. She defines that they should stimulate a culture which bases things on data and facts and be holistic in their approaches. She thus defines that the team should have a focus on:

“who we are”

“why we are together”

Conclusions

Interested in knowing more? Come along to our Symposium on 13 Dec 2022: