Scotsman Insider emag: Scotland's hidden growth potential companies stuck in second gear

The domestic market is small, and cultural factors play their part.

None of this is new as Mark Logan's Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review identified in 2020 that too many of the country's spinout companies were failing to scale.

The data in this week's Scotsman Insider sheds fresh light on the problem, thanks to a report produced by the Royal Bank of Scotland and data agency Beauhurst.

Read the full emag here >>

Of the 1,027 Scottish companies that have received government grants since 2009, only 4.2 per cent have gone on to scale.

It also puts a number on the gap as 358 firms have neither grown, exited nor taken on further investment.

Some of those businesses will have used their grant to build a solid company and have no wish to go further which is an entirely legitimate choice.

Others will have hit a blocker, they may not know where to find the next round of funding, or lack the leadership team to take them to the next level.

Finding out which is which is our task for the year ahead.

Over the coming months we will speak to businesses like these ones to find out exactly what is holding them back.

This should also be on the radar of investors and public agencies.

If Scotland can clear the obstacles stopping these companies from scaling, the prize is not only a handful of bigger businesses but at least a partial answer to the country's sluggish economic growth.In this edition, Dr Susie Mitchell, who heads the Glasgow Riverside Innovation District (GRID), points to Chemify Limitedy, which has grown from 12 employees to 200 in two years.

She describes it as the north star for what GRID is trying to achieve: a scalable Scottish company whose economic impact will be felt across the region and beyond.

The question is how many more Chemifys are hiding among those 358 firms.