Scotland and its cities are set to be on the world stage over the next few months with events such as the Commonwealth Games, the Homecoming and the Ryder Cup.
There is also the annual influx of tourists to Edinburgh with the draw of the festivals during August drawing the spotlight to our country.
It is essential that we leverage this opportunity throughout the entire tourism industry and perform well with integrated transport connectivity. Ultimately it extends our international reach through business, arts and education.
There is a key opportunity to secure greater exposure to export markets and greater awareness of added value imports.
There are established organisations around that support small and medium-sized businesses in the import and export arena. Support is also available from local, national and European governments. But we need to make sure we are making the most of the international opportunity afforded by this summer of events.
Over the coming months we should ensure plans and goals are coordinated to share insight across industry sectors. We should also set aside local and regional agendas, focussing on the bigger picture.
Export markets are critical for sustainable growth and boosting job creation. Our competitors in other countries are not standing still. We need to encourage more business mentoring and support for SMEs, share market insight across non-competing business sectors and continuous focus on making it easier to do business aboard. Working more closely together and understanding the challenges, concerns and opportunities of the small and medium sized business is key.
Over the centuries our banks and professional services have a strong reputation in supporting export growth. These institutions should strive to work more closely with SMEs to understand their challenges, concerns and opportunities in relation to trading overseas. They should find ways of providing support and advice in business areas such as currency exposure, extended working capital finance and intellectual property.
In Scotland we also have a very strong and growing international student population. We should find solutions to tapping into language skills and cultural insights as well as providing opportunities for work experience.
At the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce we are enhancing our offer in this area including launching an advisory service for business in Europe. The Global, UK and Scottish Chamber networks are also valuable sources of knowledge and support for the business community and continue to develop new support programmes.
Over the next six months we have a rare opportunity to welcome so many potential international customers onto our doorstep. Let's join forces to secure long-term advantages by working together and sharing.
David Birrell is chief executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article