Scotland must develop its commercial skills if its electronics firms are to be successful, according to Pat Daisley, manager of the electronics team at Scottish Enterprise.
“There are highly regarded management skills in Scotland but commercial skills in Scotland are the problem,” said Daisley. In the past firms have gone to England when looking for these skills, he added.
While Scottish Enterprise gets £550m from the Scottish Executive each year, that funding has not increased for seven years. If the funding had been kept in line with inflation, Scottish Enterprise would now receive about £750m a year.
With the decline of volume electronics manufacturing in Scotland, there is a clear need to grow indigenous high-tech businesses. A static amount of funds available from Scottish Enterprise is unlikely to assist this effort. “But this is the case worldwide. There is not enough money to support high-tech start-ups worldwide,” argued Daisley.
With funds that go to technology firms, Daisley said an increasing amount is leveraged from the private sector. “We have to use public sector money to get private sector money. Most of the big technology firms in Scotland were boot-strapped with private sector money.”
An increasing emphasis is also being placed on what Daisley calls softer support - training and commercialisation skills.
“It is becoming less about handing over cash and more about developing the workforce,” he said.
However, he believes there are still more graduates in the engineering and science disciplines than Scotland can handle. “There are more graduates than there is a demand for, many go to the UK.”