Hansard

I am delighted to rise in support of the Scotland can do framework,

“which makes clear Scotland’s ambitions and sets out the priority areas where the Scottish Government continues to support and act to see Scotland become a world-leading entrepreneurial and innovative nation”.

Like many colleagues in the chamber, I had a life and career prior to politics, in the information technology sector. I was an Oracle project manager with a number of consultancy firms, and was latterly the European development manager for a global document-management company that was launched in Glasgow. I hope that members will indulge me a little as I talk about a personal interest and concentrate on the fantastic digital economy that we have in Scotland today—that is, of course, if Mr Stevenson has not scared people off to the Swiss Alps.

I take a keen interest in the industry body, ScotlandIS, and I reference its recent article entitled “How Scotland learnt to create $1bn tech unicorns”. It states:

“The Scottish tech sector is thriving, even with a venture capital problem.

It may have escaped the attention of Old Street, but the technologists of Silicon Glen have been busy of late.

For the last few months FanDuel, fantasy sports specialist that hails from Edinburgh, has looked a likely contender to become the second $1bn company to emerge from the Scottish capital, following the success of flight comparison site Skyscanner, which attained ‘unicorn’ status only this February and also began in the Scottish capital.”

Skyscanner CEO Gareth Williams had a vision of

“a single website that could collect, collate and compare prices for every commercial flight in the world ... From a simple excel spreadsheet, Skyscanner was born.”

The company has grown

“to become the number one flight search engine in Europe. In 2011 a Singapore office was opened to help grow Skyscanner in the Asia-Pacific market”.

It now operates worldwide: in the UK, Singapore, Beijing, Shenzhen, Miami, Barcelona, Sofia and Budapest. It simply is one of the great success stories of entrepreneurship in Scotland.

ScotlandIS’s article goes on to talk about the support that is given to the tech industry in Scotland. It describes CodeBase in Edinburgh, which is housed in an unassuming civil service building on the south side of the city, saying:

“Sprawled across three floors the incubator houses some of the keenest technology firms in the whole of Scotland. Beginning as a spin-off from a previous start-up incubator known as TechCube, the project’s founding companies literally put the walls up before they got down to business ... CodeBase is perhaps the most prominent example of the Scottish tech sector coming together to support its members. Tenants at the incubator enjoy a host of formal and informal benefits, from monthly leases to regular meetings in which they can swap tips.”

It may interest Mr Stevenson to know that, despite some of the threats to the software industry that may come as a result of the Queen’s speech, one of the things that is highlighted by the CodeBase users is the quality of life in Scotland. It is great that, as article notes:

“For an industry that has been at the forefront of advocating better working conditions such assets are hardly trivial. At any rate, the rolling hills of Scotland seem a more likely home for unicorns than the cramped and smoggy City of London.”

I will stick with unicorns, this time of the fantasy variety. The world of fantasy games entertainment is about as far away from my own IT experience as it is possible to be, but as co-chair of the cross-party group on video games technology it would be remiss of me not to mention the great work that is being done to support entrepreneurs in that area. Later this month, XpoNorth will take place in Inverness. In the past couple of years, there has been an increasing presence of games and computing games companies, and last year’s XpoNorth saw a dozen companies take part in a games playground, showing off their titles to an audience of hundreds of creative industry types from music, film, television and other areas of the creative industries.

In a recent report, the trade association TIGA—the Independent Games Developers Association—issued a press release headed “Scotland’s videogame industry blooming, contributes £99m to UK GDP”. In the press release, TIGA highlights some areas of research carried out in 2012 and 2013, which found that

“The number of game development studios grew from 81 to 94, an increase of 16%”,

that

“the number of creative staff in studios grew from 766 to 964, an increase of 26%”,

and that the number of jobs increased by 18 per cent. It also noted that the

“combined direct and indirect tax revenues generated by the sector for the Treasury increased from £35 million to £41 million, an increase of 17%”.

It goes on to state:

“This means that Scotland now represents 11.4 per cent of the UK’s total games companies, up from 8.8 per cent in 2012 ... The total Scottish games industry headcount is 2,726—10 per cent of the entire UK videogame industry headcount.”

It truly is one of our success stories.

Paul Durrant, director of business development at Abertay University—an institution that has become synonymous with the games industry—said:

“I’ve been involved in establishing and operating incubation-type support facilities for fledgling games companies since 1999 ... We must grow the volume of new IP creation in a greater number of early stage companies to maximise our chances of picking and nurturing the potential winners so that they secure success in international markets. Well-disciplined and properly resourced business incubation will help to sustain these start-ups and build them into UK companies of scale.”

I could not agree more.

Abertay University also serves as governing body and member of the national virtual incubator, which offers support to tech start-ups and young entrepreneurs, and to students incubating breakthrough business ideas. It involves research facilities linking up with science parks and academia, all in support of the industry.

I was delighted when, earlier this year, the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee conducted its inquiry into the economic impact of the film, TV and video games industries. The committee reported:

“The Committee believes that the video games industry in Scotland is full of talent, enthusiasm and ingenuity. It is a fast-paced industry quite unlike any other, which provides high quality job opportunities. We heard that, for the industry to thrive, it needed to be able to attract and retain talented people by creating sustainable and successful businesses.”

I believe that Scotland can do that.