Podcast: Innovation in Scotland – opportunities and challenges

04:27 – What does the UK innovation survey say about innovation in Scotland?

07:10 – Is there really a decline in innovation across Scotland?

12:00 – Is business investment in Scotland really less than rest of UK?

15:44 – Product innovation versus process innovation

21:00 – How do skills shortages affect innovation?

24: 00 – How does company size affect innovation?

27:04 – How can businesses collaborate with universities to address skills development?

29:00 – Where is the policy environment in Scotland when it comes to innovation?

Transcript

00:00:08 Mairi Spowage

Hello and welcome to the latest Fraser of Allander podcast. This is the third podcast in our series in our latest partnership with Deloitte, which is focused on driving growth in Scotland through innovation and sustainability. Our focus today is going to be on innovation and what the latest data tells us about the innovation landscape in Scotland.

I’m delighted to say today I’m joined by Jillian Docherty, who’s the Chief Commercial officer for us here at Strathclyde and also the Chair of Code Base and has done loads of other jobs that are very relevant for this topic, including being the CEO of the Data Lab, for example. And I’m also joined by one of our partners at Deloitte.

I’m joined by Charlotte Norberg, who’s a partner in Deloitte technology and transformation business and specialises in digital transformation and the financial services industry. So thank you very much for joining me today, ladies, for this important conversation. Your titles are both very impressive and very varied and so I think it would be really good for our listeners to understand just a bit more about what you do on a day-to-day basis. So, so Jillian, what does your day involve and how much does innovation play into it?

00:01:24 Gillian Docherty

Thanks, Mairi. My job is very varied. So I have a range of responsibilities here at the university, but predominantly it is supporting our professional services colleagues around the income generation of the university. But that ranges from everything from student recruitment to working with our alumni right through to our startups and spin-outs, investment, marketing, comms and all of the support for our academics and research and knowledge exchange.

00:01:53 Gillian Docherty

So it’s very varied so a day can range from agreeing a new rugby strategic partnership through our sport team through to looking at sustainable foods for our catering business right through to investment in our plasma torch spin-out. So it’s very, very varied, innovation across all of it is right at the heart. And certainly innovation is something that we take very seriously strategically here at Strathclyde.

00:02:19 Mairi Spowage

Thanks, Jillian. What about you, Charlotte? If you were explaining to the lay person what you do with your clients, how would you explain it?

00:02:27 Charlotte Nordberg

So what I would say is I help the clients to shape and deliver large, transformative initiatives often focused on digital innovation, especially of course now in, in this time and age where technology is, is moving innovation at a faster pace than we’ve ever seen before. And it’s really challenging our clients around thinking about what the future could look like. How can they capitalise that, on that, and drive growth and efficiencies for their businesses and work out what they need in order to be able to deliver that?

00:03:03 Mairi Spowage

Thanks for that, Charlotte. And, and again thank you for joining us. I think both of your perspectives are really interesting here. The research we do on the economy at the the Fraser of Allander Institute can often be focused on, on data and we’ve obviously produced some analysis of the Innovation Survey which does look at, you know, what we can say about innovation in Scotland, but hearing the sorts of innovation you’re seeing in practise and with your clients really does bring it to life, particularly when we understand perhaps some of the, the barriers or the kind of things that government can do or policymakers can do to encourage innovation.

So we are focusing on, on how Scotland can drive productivity through businesses innovating with new products, services and processes and how we can accelerate this innovation and digital transformation by embracing the full potential of technology. Because something that really occurred to me when we’re looking at the research on innovation is that most of these innovative processes, you know, have that, must have digital at their heart, or certainly they’ll be a lot easier to embrace if the business is also looking at digital adoption and the fusion. And I guess you know, we can’t get away from talking about this probably without touching on AI and the potential that that’s likely to have for innovation and businesses.

But just, just first question, I guess, if we look at the UK Innovation Survey which is does try to capture the extent of innovation in businesses, this shows that innovation in Scotland lags the UK and has significantly declined over the last decade. Does this chime with what you are seeing when you’re speaking to your clients or not?

00:04:49 Charlotte Nordberg

Well, it’s interesting because I think what we are seeing universally across all of our clients is a great ambition to innovate. So there’s a real appetite for innovation. But the reality is innovation does require you need to take on additional risks. You need to have the backup funding, you need to embrace change, and and that together with this challenging market climate that we’re in at the moment, it is difficult and a challenging environment for that, to do digital innovation funding, and often what we see is the business cases for innovation gets de-prioritised and of course wanting to try and be you know, height of regulation, be safe and compliant. And so I think that that really drives the need for companies, and we’re again seeing our clients much more working through that to get well defined innovation strategies that link to their business objectives so they can very easily prioritise you know, the high profile, high return, sorry, I’ll say it again, so they can so they can prioritise the high return business cases and the social impact that has the greatest impact on society.

So for me that that is absolutely key to drive that kind of innovation, and collaboration is crucial to help to get over that investment hurdle that many of them see. Collaboration across institutions, across businesses, we are helping a number of our clients getting together and then co-investing to innovate and I think that’s really interesting and that has becoming more and more prevalent in the industry.

00:06:29 Mairi Spowage

That is really interesting, given sometimes the, I suppose, the critical mass and and deep pockets you can need to invest in these sorts of innovations and a particular concern in Scotland might be things like the the loss of headquarters, the, you know, the trend over the last 20 or 30 years or so which does make innovation and R&D and more generally more difficult. So that’s really interesting. The idea of collaboration across companies and actually it chimes back to our, our first podcast that we did on, you know, the leveraging public sector assets to accelerate the energy transition and this sort of thing. You know that that scheme of collaboration came up really strongly there as well. So it’s interesting that it’s come up again.

What about you, Gillian? Given the work you do on policy in this area and and your general experience on innovation, does it, does it chime with you? Does it, does it feel right that there’s that been that decline in innovation in the last decade?

00:07:19 Gillian Docherty

I, I think the data probably comes out at quite a broad level. You know, if you’re looking at the, the chart, there seem to be a peak. And kind of in the early 10s, not, you know, 2012, 2013, but I think that was probably on the back of some really major technological change from the early 2000s. Yeah. So from 2000 through to kind of 2012, you know, you saw the launch of the iPad, mobile phones, the, the sheer prevalence and growth of the Internet e-commerce, you know, technology deployment such as ERP web, commerce Solutions I think that saw a major adoption or of innovation, and that that often for businesses there’s cyclical elements of this that actually you’ve just got over some kind of major innovation transformation or innovation led transformation. There will be a period of, well, between the next time they have the ability of the organisation to have the absorbative capacity to go again. So, so I think that in conjunction with some of the other macro effects, whether it’s Brexit, COVID clearly and more recently the geopolitical aspects, So looking at that macro level, I think innovation is challenged. I think companies have moved from innovating sometimes to surviving, and, and certainly maybe, I’m sure we’ll get into that in terms of the scale of companies and their appetite. But I think at probably at a macro level that has declined.

But I’m very encouraged that actually I, I see innovative businesses every day. I see the work they’re doing, I see the work they do with us here at Strathclyde and collaboratively with each other, whether that’s in Glasgow City Innovation District or out at the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District. There’s some fantastic examples of innovation across Scotland and it’s how we really enable others to, to innovate is, for me, a great opportunity.

00:09:19 Mairi Spowage

Yeah, and it seems to me, you know, we say in the introduction to the research piece that we’ve published alongside the podcast, that embracing innovation is really at the heart of improving productivity. You know, it’s only through innovating for new products and services that we’re going to become more productive as a, as an economy. And I guess you know, this is quite a simplistic way of putting it, but both in the UK and Scotland, you know we’re not short of frontier companies, so there are those people really pushing their boundaries and developing those new products and services, it’s that kind of longer tail of companies that may want to adopt even quite basic digital services, for example to improve their productivity, you know which can make a big difference to that, that sort of the as we call it that long tail of less productive companies. Charlotte?

00:10:09 Charlotte Nordberg

Yeah. No, I I think it’s really interesting as well. When you look at innovation because often well, we try and challenge our clients on, don’t just innovate for today, but try and think about what does the world look like in three to five years? So, quite frankly, digitised, saying, you know, one process or doing something online that is no longer innovation, that is hiding factors. But think about, you know what, in five years time when it’s AI first, human only where it adds value, where there may not be a back office, for example in certain businesses.

To really try to challenge our thinking, to get to that and then of course, working back to what’s realistic in terms of transitioning towards that, we’re really thinking about what the world could look like in three to five years. I find that that is, I don’t know if you find that, Gillian, in your discussions as well.

00:11:00 Gillian Docherty

Yeah, I think it’s a challenge is really having that foresighting capability about what will be relevant for you, what markets will you operate in? What products and services do you need to innovate around? Where are the challengers? You know, there’s been a huge amount of disruption over the last 20 years to big major global brands and I think certainly for Scotland, the demographic of our company size and shape, it is challenging – that SME tail that, that Mairi had mentioned. The absorbative capacity of very small businesses to innovate is quite challenged. You know, they’re, they’re running fast and it’s how do we support them while they’re running fast to innovate in the most supportive way.

00:11:51 Mairi Spowage

No, no, absolutely. And you know I mentioned in in what the data shows us about not just the trend over the last decade or so, but also that, that that generally Scotland’s lagging the UK a bit. And this can be true in any metrics on you know other things are difficult to capture, like innovation, like entrepreneurship for example, but also on things like business investment.

Does this chime with what you’re seeing, given that, you know, you work with clients across the UK, Charlotte?

00:12:20 Charlotte Nordberg

I must admit I was quite surprised if I’m perfectly honest, because I see the same pattern and the same challenges across most of my clients –

00:12:30 Mairi Spowage

OK.

00:12:31 Charlotte Nordberg

-and I work with clients in the UK. I’ve also worked with clients in Scandinavia, very, very similar story. And I think that some in the report, there’s some real positives to take out of that in terms of the increased number of firms that are seeking external support, so therefore the increased recognition of how important innovation is and how we can link that to growth. And again, the theme of collaboration of course coming through very, very strongly for me there and and I think we do need a tailored approach for Scotland in terms of what the unique strengths and challenges we have here and what can we do to enable the thriving digital innovation ecosystem.

00:13:16 Mairi Spowage

So in terms of maybe the clusters we might have in Scotland, the comparative advantage we might have, and also the sort of business demography that that Jillian mentioned of you know very, a lot of smaller companies, and maybe family owned companies as well which can have its own challenges. We’ve talked about the concept and, and obviously the hook for this has been a bit of analysis of the innovation survey and so on. But it is a tricky concept to capture and you know the UK Innovation Survey does a good job of trying to do it, because it is important for us to understand what’s going on out there, and companies. But do you think that these are good enough to they really capture it for you as someone who’s worked in innovation? Gillian?

00:13:55 Gillian Docherty

I’m not sure. Yeah, we do. I think we need to keep innovating around how we measure innovation, would be a good thing to do. I think it’s quite a blunt question. I also think if you spoke to a lot of SME CEOs, MDs, business owners and said, d’you innovate? ‘No, no, we don’t do that.’

00:14:13 Mairi Spowage

Yeah.

00:14:14 Gillian Docherty

I think, I think that when you look at the basic things like, you know, new processes, a new method of organising your workforce or a, a new method of information processing, ‘oh yeah. Oh yeah, we do that, yeah.’ Right. So I think some of it could be just the high level way we ask businesses whether they do this, and whether a company would self identify as being an innovative business. Yeah, I I don’t know exactly the questions that we ask is it enough? I don’t think it is, cause I I don’t think it really captures the essence. So I think we need to keep thinking about well, how would we do that in a way that is more valuable to us because also it’s like what do we do with it? So just even understand what, what does it mean and therefore, so what? ‘So what’ is a great question.

00:15:00 Mairi Spowage

Well, that’s such a great point because all of this is, is well, one would think that the point of collecting this information is so that policymakers can help come up with a response. They can come up with a, a way to encourage more innovation because they understand more about the types of businesses that can innovate or are feeling that they can’t for whatever reason.

Yeah, absolutely. So the ‘So what?’ is really important, what do we then do about the fact that innovation has declined or that innovation is is lower in Scotland than in the EU or whatever. Yeah, I I agree with you. That’s a really important point. What do we do with the data that we collect.

I mean having said all that, you know, it’s it’s good to have a data source, but I agree with you, innovation around how we measure innovation. I like that, Gillian. That’s a good point to come out of this conversation.

00:15:46 Charlotte Nordberg

That’s a challenge.

00:15:46 Gillian Docherty

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:48 Mairi Spowage

And I like always like to talk about measurement questions as you know. If we look at the data, I mean, the decline that we’ve seen over the last decade has been very focused on business process. So we can see that product innovations have maintained even over that period of time that we’ve talked about. Even over that period of time we’ve talked about, that kind of survival piece. So I think that’s just really interesting. Do you, you know, in terms of the challenges you, you mentioned Charlotte about businesses being able to innovate and having the, the sort of finance and the headspace to do it. Would you, woul that chime with you in terms of it being about business processes, I mean the majority of the companies in the UK are in services after all are, rather than producing products.

00:16:34 Charlotte Nordberg

Yeah. And especially here in Scotland, we’re very service-focused and of course we have a history of product innovation and we, we look back, as I say we, I’m Swedish, so, so maybe not. But I definitely think it comes back to the business cases and some of the investment challenges through us, to be honest because if you look at business process, a lot of the investment required is quite difficult to get if you look at shorter term, to get the returns as quickly as the companies now need in this current economic environment.

So I think that that is one problem that we have, and I often hear clients saying actually in short term, it’s quicker just for me to do it manually and then I’ll automate it when I have some discretionary funding. And so that to me is is a big hurdle and that’s, again we could look at the innovation strategy, how important that is to look at it and and link it to the business objective. Really linking some of this process innovation to growth.

And again, I see that over and over again the business case is only focused on cost savings and efficiencies and not about how do you create scalable growth.

00:17:50 Gillian Docherty

Right.

00:17:51 Charlotte Nordberg

And talking about productivity and trying to get growth to Scotland, I think that is is is absolutely fundamental.

00:17:58 Mairi Spowage

What about yourself, Gillian? I mean, in terms of of the the businesses that you’ll be working with. You know, if you look at the product innovation versus business processes.

00:18:07 Gillian Docherty

I I think actually product innovation is, is almost at the sexy end. You know, it’s a new material. It’s a new metal, it’s a new thing, you see it touch it, feel it. Your ROI is really clear.

Business process re-engineering. You know it’s a tough sell. It’s a tough gig. The other thing is there’s not always been the most easy of things that businesses have done. They’ve embarked ‘ohh yeah, we’ll just change that whole process,’ well and and it’s been much more difficult or challenging because it’s not just about the thing, it could be culture, people, inertia. It could be, ‘well, that’s the way we do things here.’ That horrific statement, you know, so I think there’s a lot of other things that make business process re-engineering or transformation or innovation more difficult than, than product. You know, whether that’s software product, hardware products, physical products, it’s tangible, really tangible. Whereas I think on the business process side, and I do think it’s probably come off the back of quite major business process changes 10-plus years ago.

And not all of them were successful. I’m sure we’ve all got colleagues who have gone through that in painful ways and businesses that have lost money or the ROI has not delivered and therefore it’s the view of, well, let’s not do that again.

00:19:35 Mairi Spowage

No, I think that I think that’s a really good point. The tangibility of – and we, we see it when we talk about the economy more generally. You know, we’ve been, in the US, you know, everyone’s obsessed with making things and manufacturing and all these sorts of things, even though, well in Scotland, it’s 10% of our economy and services is, is, you know is is 77% of our economy. So you know, it’s just, it’s interesting that the tangible is still, can often be the default when we think about economic activity. And and so on, and and it’s the same for innovation and and as you say, a lot of that’s about the tangibility of the return on investment as well as you know, the thing itself. And as you say, can be seen more at the kind of sexy end of innovation.

00:20:21 Charlotte Nordberg

Right. I think it’s also really interesting talking about when a business process innovation, the importance of adoption and, and you touched on that. We talk again a lot to our clients about, it’s all very good innovating the business process and thinking about how you wanna do it. Now, how do you get your customers and your colleagues to actually use it?

And very often that comes as an afterthought, and so the return on investment gets even worse. And it’s a spiralling negative case. So for me, that, again, is something that we should talk about upfront, not just innovation, but the adoption of such an innovation.

00:21:00 Mairi Spowage

So I think this, this leads into a question on skills, because I do want to talk about the size differences of companies ‘cause I thought that was really quite fascinating for me. But just quickly, when we’re talking about these cultural issues that could probably get in the way of adoption of business process innovations, I mean, to what extent do you think it’s about skills? You know? So we talk a lot about skills shortages in Scotland at the moment. You know, lots of new technologies and new developments in our economy, whether it’s to do with energy transition or digital transformation we’re talking about potential for new jobs.

But as far as I can see, your issue isn’t necessarily jobs, but more the people to do those jobs and and the people to do those jobs with the correct skills in the correct places. So I just wonder what your thoughts were on to what extent the reluctance for business process innovation or maybe this sort of resistance to it is about the nervousness of people in different parts of an organisation about whether they have these sorts of skills, they have the understanding of this new process. You know, is there an issue here about rescaling, retraining, what do you think?

00:22:06 Gillian Docherty

Really. Yeah. I think skills is a huge part of it. I think there’s, for me, there’s a couple of – there’s skills, absorbative capacity, and I think that plays to the size of, you know, the the, the peak of the innovation, according to the report, at that medium size, not the really small end. And then the the bigger the organisation, you get into the challenges around adoption and you know, Charlotte mentioned about the the lack of focus on that and we’ve all seen examples of where something has changed and then all these side processes appear growing out the side of it that that people develop so as not to change. But I think skills is a massive part, but I think it’s multifaceted. It’s all the way up to senior leaders in the organisation and their experience, right through to some of the technical skills that might be needed, the change skills that might be needed is important. We’ve certainly seen a a growth over the last few years, and again, probably more relevant for medium to large companies of experience on boards and non execs of technology, cyber, those types of things that will hold an organisation to account, maybe a little bit more than in the past.

Where boards traditionally have been finance, audit, risk, et cetera. So I think, it’s at all levels, from board, through senior executives, through middle management, that’s, that layer of management in the medium to large companies has got such an important part to play in the success or otherwise of innovation. So and, right down to new skills and technologies around AI or or any other tool, AI is just another tool. Any other tools that can drive productivity and innovation.

00:23:51 Mairi Spowage

Indeed. No, it’s, it’s really interesting. Yeah. The so, yeah, the finding in the, in the data is that those sort of medium-sized, those hundred to 249 employee businesses have the highest level of innovation and it falls off a bit as you get to those sort of 250-plus, the largest companies, and I did wonder if you felt it would be about that, that kind of, you know, you need that critical mass, you need the sort of size of company, maybe, to have the expertise to innovate. But then if you get to a certain size, you sort of become encumbered by the processes in your own organisation and the cultural issues and and the resistance becomes much more extensive and maybe that’s why it falls off. What would your experience be, Charlotte of different sizes of companies and innovation?

00:24:38 Charlotte Nordberg

Yeah. So I, I can completely see that the correlation there. If we think about medium companies versus small, of course they got the greater resources. Smaller companies tend to operate on a tight budget. You know, less people. They’ve got more established infrastructure, stable processes. They’ve got a broader market reach, they’ve got larger customer base, so they can tap into what the market actually wants.

And we’ve talked about culture being absolutely key for embracing change. And if you then look at medium versus larger companies, the medium have much greater flexibility and agility in terms of the workforce and got less bureaucracy. So I think we can see some of the larger companies starting to realise thatwanting to change but of course, culture change is not quick and it takes time, but there’s definitely, I think a recognition of the agility that the workforce need to have. And I think it’s also interesting, I’m starting to see clients recruit, not necessarily for what people know today but how fast they can learn and how well they can teach others, because the skills that we need to have today is not probably not going to be the same that we need in 5 to 10 years. So we need a workforce that can move with the times.

00:26:04 Mairi Spowage

So that’s really interesting. So, instead of looking for for skills zone, I don’t know coding or machine learning or or whatever. It’s more you’re looking for proactivity, agility, you know, willingness to learn new things. And to be adaptable.

00:26:21 Charlotte Nordberg

Yeah. So, so in combination and I think that kind of creating that halo effect of of teaching each other where I think in a, in a group of colleagues, I think that’s really, really important, but you need to then, of course, be able to learn and you need to be able to teach others, but just coming in with, you know, one set of capabilities, something that that’s going to stay stable for the next 20 years, that that’s a thing in, in my opinion of the past.

00:26:51 Mairi Spowage

Yeah, there’s, there’s always an interesting segue into the way that we work now and you know, people being in the office and all that sort of thing, it it, you know, on the back of that is, that’s really interesting. But let’s not go down that rabbit hole.

So I mean when you’re working with clients and they’re thinking about these sorts of innovations and transformations, how much does that kind of, you know, focus on re-training play into it, you know, are, are there opportunities perhaps for businesses to work with, I don’t know, universities or colleges to think about how this could be done and delivered to encourage innovation in the business?

00:27:30 Charlotte Nordberg

I would absolutely say so. We’re seeing a lot of companies now looking at strategic workforce planning and what skills they need today. And in the future. And again I come back to the keyword, collaboration, but absolutely, across supporting organisations, universities, but not only higher education, also schools, external support, you know, cross collaboration across business, but definitely think that that is where Scotland has got a real sweet spot. And they’ve done some fantastic initiatives already, creating those digital pathways in terms of trying to to up skill and re skill our population. So I think there’s actually some really positives there in the programme governing report that that they had released recently.

00:28:21 Mairi Spowage

Just thinking about policy, then, you know, and how the government, you know, both the UK and Scottish Governments can encourage innovation in the economy. We do have an innovation strategy in Scotland which was published in 2023. I would say obviously the Scottish Government produce lots of strategy documents and we’ve commented on that as an institute many times. I think this one was pretty well received, I would say in terms of the content of it and the specificity of it, I suppose you. A strategy is good if it actually prioritises things and and and rules out other things. But it did focus on the development of innovation clusters. And while the innovation strategy isn’t just digital, it’s at the heart of, of many of the kind of policy prescriptions that are in the the innovation strategy. Gillian, I just wanted to get your kind of reflections on, to what extent these have been, not achieved, because it’s early days, but you know, have they been successful there? There are certain policies, for example, the government pursued around tech scale, for example. What your views on the strategy and what it’s achieved?

00:29:28 Gillian Docherty

Yeah. So, I mean, clearly, I’ve gotta do a big shout out for tech scale and the work that Code Base do more broadly. And I, and I think we’re starting to see, you know, a year plus in of that making quite a significant difference in terms of scaling companies. But there’s much more than just the tech scaler programme as well.

I think the innovation strategy landed well because it was Co-created. It’s back to that collaboration work. They were co-created by a number of working groups, whether that’s in investment, sectoral domain expertise, etcetera, which I think is why it landed well. I think we’ve still got work to do, there’s still a lot of work underway. So, there’s a lot of work going on just from now around the National Innovation Fund, for example, hopefully more on this later this year and, and I think the strength of the clusters, I’d probably say that we’ve certainly seen that tangibly in parts of Scotland, whether that’s through the green free ports in terms of energy transition and also advanced manufacturing and supply chains as part of that. Definitely more work to be done, but that’s been good to see. Also the work of the clusters here in the Glasgow City region, both driving the Innovation accelerator projects and the impending investment zone both here and then also in Aberdeen and in the broader work in Edinburgh around tech businesses data and AI, so I think we’re seeing elements of clusters really growing and that also then leads to clustering of skills work, which is key. Our skills capability to attract the best talent, particularly in a new area, new sector, new domain area, whether it’s photonics or quantum to bring the best talent from around the world. Coming for one company is really challenging, but if there’s 15 to 20 or 40, it’s a much more attractive proposition. So I think that clustering element – we will not be brilliant at everything. So again, that focus is really key because if we can and we do have a great space cluster here in Glasgow, we have a fantastic photonics and quantum cluster across the central belt that will attract money. So the fuel, the investment and the talent that will help those businesses and organisations innovate and ultimately then help the economy.

00:31:51 Mairi Spowage

Yeah, and and those clusters are the things that really drive the establishment of sustainable supply chains for those companies as well, which is really key in order for the benefits of those, those really quite high-end jobs, certainly many of them can be, filtering through into the supply chains into the wider and wider economy and community. And Charlotte, when you’re talking to your clients, you know, this isn’t supposed to be a political question at all. But, you know, you know, do you hear any things that businesses would wish the government might do or things that the government, governments at any level, you know, can get wrong when it comes to innovation, in terms of the environment?

00:32:38 Charlotte Nordberg

Not too much, to be honest. I think there’s a lot of recognition that there are some fantastic initiatives. I think we can always go further. There’s no doubt that we can go further. I think we can also make it available and known to more, and I think this kind of cluster approach is really interesting because the entrepreneurship fosters entrepreneurship, isn’t it? We want people to to be inspired by it, but I think that we just need to publicise more, we can always go farther, but, but I think there’s a lot of really good initiatives I think. Like for example, the Anna Stewart and Mark Logan’s pathway report in that investment having gone out and we’re starting to see some really good momentum in the market behind some of some of initiatives like that.

00:33:31 Mairi Spowage

No, absolutely. And I think Gillian’s point about the the strategy landing well because it spoke to industry because it was Co created with industry is a really good one and we’re back to that, you know, like you say, that collaboration point which you know seems to keep coming up as we talk about how we can drive growth through innovation and sustainability in Scotland. So thanks for joining me today, ladies. Were there any main points you wanted to make before we sign off the podcast?

00:34:00 Charlotte Nordberg

Yeah. The only thing I would like to say is, for me, a keyword, we talk a lot about collaboration, is courage. And that is really, really important in my mind about successful innovation. Just have a go, fail well, fail fast. You know, that’s what innovation is all about, and if it doesn’t work, change course. And so I would add that as a keyword together with collaboration.

00:34:26 Mairi Spowage

And that’s really interesting actually. And maybe again why we see it in that, those sort of medium sized companies who perhaps have more, can have more of that ethos of, you know, allowing people to try things. And maybe fail, but to fail in a sort of safe way, so that they feel they can try something else.

00:34:44 Gillian Docherty

Yeah. And probably just to add to that, it’s optimism. It’s too easy in today’s world with the challenges that we’re facing, whether it’s cost of living, economic and social challenges locally and then the situation globally, we’ve got to remain optimistic. So on the back of courage, continue to try to be optimistic.

00:35:05 Mairi Spowage

Do you know what this is? This is such an optimistic podcast so far. I would, I would like to say, but no, thank you for that, because often, you know, we’re obviously talking about the economy on a regular basis and particularly recently we do feel a little, I certainly feel something like the voice of doom. So you both sort of cheered me up, and have inspired me to innovate about how we might measure innovation and also to be courageous and optimistic for the rest of my day. So thank you so much for joining me today.

We’ll be back soon with our next podcast in this series and also our regular podcast about all of our research. You can see all of the related information we’re publishing alongside this podcast today on our website, and make sure you sign up to us on socials to hear about the latest things that we’re publishing. So we’ll see you again soon for the next Fraser of Allander podcast.