Five years ago, Glasgow City Innovation District (GCID) was established by its five founding partners – the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow City Council, Scottish Enterprise, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurial Scotland. It’s an initiative that’s a beacon of collaboration, innovation, and entrepreneurship across the City of Glasgow, mirroring renowned models like Barcelona’s 22@ District and Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Today, with over £1 billion invested, GCID stands as a testament to the region’s tangible regeneration, fostering growth in the tech, digital, and creative sectors, propelling Glasgow City to the forefront of Scotland’s innovation landscape.

Now, as Glasgow gears up to host its inaugural Tech Week, the city’s vibrant tech, digital, and creative industries are poised to take centre stage. From May 13-18, Glasgow Tech Week will seek to illuminate the city’s innovation prowess, creating a new enlightenment for industry, sparking conversations on job creation and economic prosperity.

Spearheaded by its flagship event, Glasgow Tech Fest on May 16, Tech Fest will welcome renowned speakers to elucidate on some of the most pressing and salient issues facing Scottish tech.

In an interview with DIGIT, we speak to Glasgow City Innovation District’s director, Alisdair Gunn about what GCID set out to deliver in its strategic plan five years ago, what it’s achieved and why now is a great time to get involved in Glasgow Tech Week.

Glasgow’s Innovation Ecosystem
In recent decades, Scotland has made significant strides in nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship across a myriad of market sectors.

Key drivers of this progress include the presence of world-class research institutions, a skilled workforce, industry-aligned government policy, and a vibrant startup ecosystem. Building on these foundations and offering a framework to connect these elements to establish a self-sustaining ecosystem, Scotland’s National Innovation Strategy, first published in 2021, emerged as a strategic roadmap to capitalise on existing strengths, address challenges, and unlock new opportunities for innovation-led growth.

However, when the strategy was published, GCID was already two years old.

Founded on a model that puts an onus on establishing collaborative partnerships between academia, industry, and the public sector – executed through a practical framework of regeneration – GCID is proving to be a formative legacy since the University of Strathclyde
first spearheaded the project in 2019.

Discussing what the objectives were when GCID was first established, Gunn says: “Our focus is to create a leading hub for entrepreneurship, innovation and collaboration.”

When it was first established, Gunn concedes that the city’s innovation ecosystem and startup community “wasn’t as mature as other national cities like London or Edinburgh.”

On establishing GCID, Gunn says that “the key focus was to build a foundation that would support the growth of Glasgow’s tech ecosystem for the decades ahead. We built that off the back of what was already established within the district, with the University of Strathclyde’s Technology and Innovation Centre (TIC) being a key catalyst.”

The TIC serves as a hub for academia, industry, and government to come together and work on cutting-edge projects, develop new technologies, and drive economic growth.

Alongside the research undertaken within the Centre, the TIC has established itself as a well-loved venue for technology, science, and engineering conferences.

Gunn adds: “The true measure of an internationally successful Innovation District is the creation of a collaborative Innovation Ecosystem of industry partners.

“For instance, the Compound Semiconductor Catapult (CSA) recently became the fifth Innovate UK Catapult to establish a presence within GCID as well as the Royal Academy of Engineering who established their first enterprise hub for Scotland. Beyond that, we’ve
supported the Glasgow Tech Meetup group establish their monthly meetups which now attracts a community of over 100 developers every month.”

While much of the attention – with regards to propping up the tech/innovation ecosystem – in Glasgow undoubtedly goes to big budget high profile presences like the Barclay’s Campus, or the newly announced JP Morgan development, in Gunn’s eyes, it’s the continued growth of community-driven innovation district facets such as the Glasgow Tech Meetup, creation of The Social Hub or even Startup Grind Glasgow that serves as the real indicator of GCID’s success.

“Over the last five years, we’ve really been focused on building the community of founders, developers and ecosystem partners – that’s been one of the biggest achievements of the district to date which has led to Glasgow being ranked as the top city in Europe for strategy in attracting overseas investment.”

The Need for Inward Investment
Talking about tech investment in Scotland can be thorny. It creates an instant flowchart which generates both positive and negative outcomes.

On one hand, a recent KPMG report highlighted that, while 2021/22 saw record venture capital investment – £707m and £628m for Scottish scale-ups, respectively – it almost halved in 2023 (£359 million) which in isolation, may seem like grave cause for concern or,
at the very least, heralds the end of an unprecedented tech bull run.

However, Gunn adds: “If you look at the investment reported by the Glasgow Tech Ecosystem platform (powered by Dealroom), 2023 was a record year for Glasgow’s tech and science businesses, and continues the year-on-year growth we’ve seen across the district.”

For Gunn, it’s illustrative of the notion that the money is moving to the areas of innovation that addresses the most pressing problems of our time.

“An area of change is the focus on deep tech, where innovation driven startups develop products and applications in markets like health, space, energy and life sciences.”

Qualifying this point, Gunn name checks the bumper investment deal for Enough (securing €40 million in 2023) – a spinout from the University of Strathclyde.

However, Gunn reinforces the need for an expanded “inward investment strategy” focused on attracting a pipeline of innovation driven enterprises into the region, whilst also creating a favourable investment environment that allows companies to scale.

He adds: “The growth of Edinburgh’s tech ecosystem was established through the likes of Skyscanner, FanDuel, FreeAgent, X Design etc., however many of these companies have reached out to acquire talent based within Glasgow to maintain growth.”

Gunn says that innovation districts like GCID, with collaborative spaces and high-profile developments like The Social Hub and Barclay’s Eagle Labs, gives staff a place to gather and build long standing connections which in turn creates innovation pipelines and catalyses investment appetite.

Glasgow Tech Fest
Gunn is no stranger to developing Scotland’s tech sector serving as one of the co-founders of the internationally acclaimed Turing Festival.

It’s little surprise then that Glasgow Tech Fest has proved an intuitive fit into GCID’s oeuvre, with the event being established to “bring the founders and their teams together to share ecosystem challenges and create opportunities for international growth.”

Glasgow Tech Fest is focused on key themes that allows attendees to hear from founders, investors, leaders, and ecosystem builders gain insights into the tech sector and learn more about founder journeys.

Headline speakers at this year’s Glasgow Tech Fest will be scientist, educator, and broadcaster Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who will deliver the opening keynote speech on breaking barriers; and Jason Bradbury, the journalist and presenter best known for his
former role on The Gadget Show, who will give the closing keynote speech on the future of technology.

Beyond this, Gunn was always keen for Tech Fest to serve as a platform that’s representative of the kind incremental development that GCID aspires to support at a grassroots business level. Namely, by having people on stage who were perhaps members of the audience in previous years thus providing them the opportunity to elevate themselves as a founder.

Glasgow Tech Week
This year will feature an expanded, multi-day format by way of Glasgow Tech Week, between May 13-18, with Tech Fest punctuating proceedings on May 16.

There’s an important distinction between Glasgow Tech Week and Fest. Where Tech Fest is a curated line-up of speakers, hoping to illuminate themed discourse pertinent to the tech ecosystem, Tech Week is an altogether different proposition.

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Gunn added that we wanted to create “a time and place” for businesses, partners, and enterprises from across Glasgow’s tech ecosystem to “host their own event and share their own expertise on how to accelerate the growth of Glasgow’s key industry sectors”

It’s a format that’s clearly piqued interest, with 21 events already on board for Glasgow Tech Week.

For Gunn, this is a testament to the ethos of creating a “place-based programme that supports the advancement of innovation – a place to live, work, play, innovate.”

There’s very few who would argue against the notion that what GCID has achieved in the last five years is remarkable.

The expanded format of Glasgow Tech Fest to accommodate Tech Week is illustrative not only of the progress in engendering a collaborative tech ecosystem in Glasgow City and the City region, but a tangible appetite to make the next five years as transformative as the first.