Chris van der Kuyl is co-founder of 4J Studios and founding chairman of Entrepreneurial Scotland
I AM delighted to be speaking at the first-ever Invest2Scale event taking place in Edinburgh on November 2. This gathering brings together business leaders behind Scottish companies with strong growth potential and key figures from the UK and international investor community. Invest2Scale is a much-welcome development in terms of how we can better support some of our most promising companies to help them maximise their aspirations.
While Scotland has a strong start-up eco-system with a decent pipeline of new companies coming to the fore, we do struggle in fully scaling up many of our businesses which are too often sold off before they reach their apex. This ultimately impacts our prosperity as successful, globally-focused companies will create jobs, contribute wealth towards great public services, and elevate the nation’s status on the international stage.
Being the individual behind a scale-up business may not be for everyone, but by putting entrepreneurship at the heart of our society, Scotland can ensure we secure more of the benefits of entrepreneurial success.
This begins with education. The traditional method of supporting business with grants and tax breaks on capital expenditure needs replaced with an enlightened philosophy based on generating growth through a talented workforce. As we have seen from the decisions of many globally-successful companies, including Amazon, getting access to talent is a far more essential requirement for growth and a key factor driving many investment decisions.
To produce this talent pool, we must ensure the education system is aligned to the needs of the modern economy. At a time where some Scottish schools are unable to offer their pupils Higher-level Computing Studies due to budget cuts or staff shortages, we are clearly failing on that front. We need to re-focus on ubiquitous STEM subjects and give them the same priority as Maths and English. We also need to ensure that everyone involved in the education system – from policymakers to teachers – recognises the importance of entrepreneurship with a suitable structure in place that is focused on supporting business growth.
Whilst it took time to develop, Scotland’s games sector saw the benefits of this approach with the creation of education programmes which helped the industry become a world leader. Led by the degree programme offered by Abertay University, we built a skills and talent base that has helped many companies achieve their full potential.
Government has an important role to play in creating an environment where business can flourish. Along with ensuring we continue to offer a stable society and engaging culture to enable companies to attract the best talent, we must also look at how we can further support universities to nurture the skills that are relevant to our economic growth needs.
Scotland was once at the forefront in promoting entrepreneurship, but since the 20th century we have adopted a fear of failure which now pervades so many aspects of society, from education to government to business. We need to move beyond this and step out of the box if we are to really thrive as a nation.
Putting a greater emphasis on supporting scale-up businesses, as nextweek’s Invest2Scale event aims to do, is a great step forward. We must now further build on this ambition by promoting entrepreneurship across all levels of society if Scotland is to reach its full economic potential.
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