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Edinburgh - A region of excellence for innovative start-ups
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Edinburgh is situated on the southeast coast of Scotland. As well as being Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh also acts as the administrative centre for Scotland, it houses the Scottish parliament and is one of the major cultural cities in Europe and is home to major events such as the Edinburgh festival.
The Edinburgh region covers an area of 1.74 thousand km2. The overall population amounts to 780 000 with the city of Edinburgh accounting for over half this number with a population of 445 000.
GDP per capita is 20% greater than that of Scotland as a whole.
Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D, as % of GDP is 41.5% and the total R&D personnel per 1000 active workers 16.6. Workers in the most R&D intensive industry sectors as a % of active population 6.4%.
Edinburgh has an innovative and dynamic economy and is the hub of the ‘silicon glen’ phenomenon. The central belt of Scotland has developed into one of the largest concentrations of microelectronics industries anywhere in Europe, with a world class cluster of 424 electronics companies in 657 units. Represented are both major international companies, such as BAE Systems, SUN Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi and Canon and a dynamic sector of smaller specialist enterprises, many of which have spun-out of universities or larger companies as niche or new and exciting areas of technology. The area has been at the forefront of the world-wide silicon revolution for more than 40 years and the continued creation of new innovative companies keeps the region at the frontiers of technological advancement |
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Scottish Enterprise
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The national economic development agency for Scotland has an annual budget of £450m (€750m). The development agency deals with three strategic themes: growing businesses, global connections and learning and skills. The agency operates through 12 local enterprise companies. The Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian (SEE&L) has an annual budget of £49m (€82m) with which to pursue the strategic themes.
The Edinburgh Model
The SEE&L seeks to promote innovation and growth within the region by developing a business model focussing on the development and promotion of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with high growth potential that operate within priority sectors. The model gives special attention to the pro-active collaboration between private businesses and academic research centres. The promotion of public / private partnerships will lead to increased job creation, greater scope for innovation and an improved status for the region as a centre for growth and research and development.
In 2001 SEE&L had an annual turnover of €73m and in 2001 helped 1285 start-ups including a significant number of potentially high growth companies, supported 130 commercialisation projects and helped 180 organisations to engage in e-commerce. |
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Educational institutes, scientific parks and R&D facilities
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The Edinburgh region is strongly committed to innovation and R&D. There is a range of regional actors working together in the Edinburgh Innovation Partnership, which brings together both public sector and private sector organisations.
Principal university institutions in the region are the University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University, Napier University, the Scottish Agricultural College and the Queen Margaret University College. All have participated actively in the Scottish executive's programme to establish spin-out companies from the local academic research base. In recent years those institutions alone have created 30 new spin-off companies, - 10% of the UK total – attracting €110m in investment funding and creating over 200 jobs in the Edinburgh region. Start-up companies by university staff and students have experienced similar positive results.
The University of Edinburgh is one of the largest and most successful universities in the UK. During 1998-1999, the university was successful in attracting research contracts and awards worth over €139m, an increase of over 27% on the previous year.
The University of Edinburgh is a highly research-active university, providing over 24% of all Scottish higher education R&D and nearly 10% of the entire Scottish R&D effort.
Commercialisation strategies undertaken by the university will create approximately an additional €83m and over 1200 jobs for the Scottish economy.
The Edinburgh region is home to two major science parks. Pentland Science Park which has 12 companies on its site and Heriot-Watt research park, which has 28 research and development companies and forms links between these companies and the academic resources at the university.
The region also has specialist incubator facilities such as Edinburgh Technopole, which provides physical infrastructure and business support services for spin-offs from the university science base.
Other R&D institutes include the Roslin institute, an animal biotechnology centre famous for the research that produced "Dolly" the sheep and for the spin-off company PPL Therapeutics, and the Moredun research institute, specialising in medical biotechnology. Both of these institutes have strong linkages to the Pentland Science Park. It is unsurprising to find that the region is an acknowledged leader in a wide variety of medical disciplines, from genetics and immunology to oncology and innovating new surgical techniques.
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Publications and Patents
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The number of scientific publications for the Edinburgh region is regularly above 3500 every year and this equates to an annual publication rate of nearly 5000 per million population.
The number of patents submitted per year is also high with an annual patent rate of approximately 550 patents per million working population per year. It is also estimated that if patents for which the research was performed in the region but were registered elsewhere (for example the patentee’s headquarters) then this would increase the figure by about 70%. |
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Education and training measures
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The Edinburgh region has imaginative and farsighted training measures in place. The Alba centre, created through a partnership of universities and the private sector, provides a regular supply of highly skilled graduate employees for the electronics sector. There is also the Heriot Watt Foresight Training Centre for Scotland were SMEs are brought together for training in how to examine predicted trends over the next 10-20 years in their sector and to develop strategies to address those trends. |
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Public and Private venture capitalism
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There are about 40 venture capital companies or venture capital arms of banks operating in and around Edinburgh, some specialising in specific sectors, others focusing on particular stages of company growth.
There is the Edinburgh technology fund, which is funded from public and private sources to support the establishment of university and research institute spin-offs.
The Business angels provide funding but more importantly experience, with many of them becoming personally involved in the management of a new company.
In total, approximately €250-300m in venture capital is currently readily available in the Edinburg region. |
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Contact details
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Nigel Whiteley
Project Director
Edinburgh chamber of Commerce
27 Melville street
Edinburgh EH3 7JF
Tel : +44 131 477 80 38
e-mail : nigel.whiteley@ecce.org
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