Elevator has launched a new nationwide survey targeting Scotland’s ‘missing middle’ in growth support, which the entrepreneurship and business support group believes is overlooking SMEs stuck between early-stage support and scale-up success.

In a bid to uncover what growing Scottish businesses need to thrive, Elevator’s SME Scotland Survey 2025 questions firms around access to finance, government support, and community wealth building.

The poll also asks Scots firms about their experience of technology investment and AI, their talent and skills strategies, and export plans, as well as their overall sentiment on the current economic environment. 

“Discussions with business owners over the last couple of years have demonstrated a perceived gap in growth support for established SMEs, and we want to scratch the surface around this important area through the survey,” said Elevator CEO Rachel Ross.

“In Scotland, we are very good at supporting early-stage startups at one end of the spectrum, and at the other end that would also be the case for scale-up companies, but where we could be missing a trick is around what has been described as the ‘missing middle’.

“We know that SMEs are the lifeblood of the Scottish economy, they consistently face economic and business challenges, so the more we can help them grow, the more we will all benefit as a nation.”

According to the Scottish Government’s Businesses in Scotland report from late last year, an estimated 355,805 SMEs were operating across the country, accounting for around 42% of employment in the private sector as a whole.  

Scaling up these small businesses has already proven beneficial to the wider economy, with the latest figures from the Scottish National Investment Bank showing that while Scottish scaleups only made up around 0.5% of the country’s SMEs in 2021, they accounted for a third of the total SME turnover and generated over 60% more turnover per employee than other Scottish enterprises.

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More recently, high-growth Scottish SMEs have benefited from increased backing from angel investors, with the value of private capital committed rising from £100.6m to £106.4m over 2023-24, while public sector co-investment provided a further £25.6 million.

Aside from investment, the Scottish Government have laid out plans to help SMEs grow with a national AI adoption programme, part of the latest Programme for Government, with research showing that 90% of Scots SMEs plan to invest in AI tech to boost growth and productivity.