We have long felt that there was an opportunity to enhance our understanding of Scotland’s entrepreneurship and innovation performance through a dedicated resource that provides a forum for analysis, debate, and discussion of relevant and novel regional and national indicators. To that end, we have created The Scottish Entrepreneurship and Innovation Observatory at the University of Strathclyde Business School as a joint initiative between the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation and the Fraser of Allander Institute.
Launching this initiative in 2025 is an apt way of celebrating the Hunter Centre’s 25th and the Fraser of Allander’s 50th anniversaries, bringing together our expertise to support understanding of this critical part of Scotland’s economy. Scotland’s entrepreneurial performance has been the subject of several important recent reviews – Ana Stewart and Mark Logan’s Pathways review of female entrepreneurship, Mark Logan’s Technology Ecosystem Review, and Shane Corstorphine’s Scaling Scotland report. Each of these contributes detailed analysis of the situation Scotland finds itself in and what can be done to improve matters. At the heart of these contributions is high quality quantitative and qualitative data underpinning important insights and recommendations. Our ambition is to build on this work by offering regular analysis of Scotland’s entrepreneurial performance across a range of measures, to build better intelligence on what is working (or not), where our strengths lie as a country, and how key trends are evolving. Good quality data and analysis are crucial to informing better support, decision-making, and co-ordination of resources for Scotland’s entrepreneurs and innovators.
In this inaugural “state of the nation” report, we present a series of analyses of key areas of Scotland’s entrepreneurship and innovation performance drawn from a range of different sources, including official publications, privately held data, and our own bespoke research. Consistent across these insights is the recognition that, for Scotland to continue to effectively support new and scaling businesses, we need access to high-quality, relevant data, analysis, discussion, and ideas that can inform how we meaningfully engage with the challenges of business in the twenty-first century.
As part of this initiative, we are committed to working with key stakeholders in the Scottish entrepreneurial ecosystem to support and provide ongoing analysis and insights. This report is the first in what will be an annual series, alongside a dedicated website where we will host data, commentaries, blogs, and discussion papers detailing different aspects of Scotland’s entrepreneurship and innovation performance. Our website will be updated regularly with additional insights to provide a repository of high-quality information for all those interested in this area. We hope you will find this report and the associated resources useful, and we look forward to building collaborative insights in the future.
Authors
Niall MacKenzie
Professor Niall MacKenzie is the head of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation at the University of Strathclyde.
Mairi is the Director of the Fraser of Allander Institute. Previously, she was the Deputy Chief Executive of the Scottish Fiscal Commission and the Head of National Accounts at the Scottish Government and has over a decade of experience working in different areas of statistics and analysis.
Chirsty is a Knowledge Exchange Associate at the Fraser of Allander Institute where she primarily works on projects related to employment and inequality.
Aidan is a Knowledge Exchange Assistant at the Fraser of Allander Institute.