Scotland’s leading business figures, including a former Skyscanner exec, have released a landmark report aimed at transforming the country’s brightest startups into world-class companies.

The independent report, Scaling Scotland: Building the Engine for the Next 50 Years of Prosperity, authored by Skyscanner’s former SVP for Growth, Shane Corstorphine, alongside a panel of senior business leaders, tackles the challenge of turning high-potential startups into internationally competitive firms.

The report, underpinned by in-depth interviews with more than 75 founders, business figures, and investors, highlights the slow erosion of Scotland’s ‘headquarters-economy’ over the last thirty years, with many anchor businesses either being acquired, relocating, or closing altogether.

Between 2001 and 2016, the study notes that over 40% of Scotland’s high-growth firms were either bought out or closed up, often at the pivotal £10m–£50m turnover stage, where access to growth capital, experienced leadership, and expansion strategies are decisive to success.

The scale-up pipeline has narrowed to the point that Scotland is currently estimated to have around 1,500 scale-ups with revenues up to £5 million, with 280 in the £5-10m bracket, 250 between £10-50m, and just 85 with turnover of over £50 million. 

Scotland’s scale-up shortfall was underscored this week by Deloitte’s Fast 50 report, which featured just three Scottish firms among the UK’s fastest-growing companies, while 70% of the list was dominated by London-based businesses.

The Scaling Scotland report, in line with data from the UK’s ScaleUp Institute, suggests that bridging this scale-up gap could result in the creation of more than 100,000 high-value Scottish jobs, and over £20 billion in additional annual company revenues.

“As things stand, our entrepreneurial landscape acts like a startup, whereas it needs to behave like a scaleup,” said Corstorphine, who also sits as chair of the Scottish Scale-up Panel.

“Much as a rapidly growing business must focus on strong leadership, strategy and outcomes, so must Scotland’s entrepreneurial community.  Fundamentally, this must be driven by leaders in both the private and public sectors.”

To achieve this, the report contends that Scotland’s political and business leaders must address four mutually reinforcing pillars – business capability, talent, funding, and market expansion and internationalisation – to overcome scale-up barriers hampering long-term growth. 

Among the key recommendations of the report, which are mapped to the four pillars, are the creation of a ‘Scottish Scale-Up Enablement Hub’ to streamline the country’s fragmented support system led by collaboration between private and public sector leaders, allowing for measurable, scalable, and clear growth.

The report also recommends establishing a tech-enabled, concierge-style support layer for founders, alongside building a pool of entrepreneurial operators to strengthen leadership capacity and bringing deeper scale-up experience to company boards.

It is also vital, says the study, to attract returning Scots and international hires, expand access to high-value growth capital, reform public co-investment to redirect more capital to the highest potential companies, and for the Government to commission a national growth culture report to set out a long-term support strategy. 

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Chief entrepreneur, Ana Stewart, recently set out her scale-up ambitions for the country, telling DIGIT that despite an impressive start-up rate, Scotland is “not delivering high performance or good stats around scaleups.”

Calling for a sharper focus on rapidly scaling firms, Stewart said: “Supporting scale-ups is one of my priorities as Chief Entrepreneurship Advisor, so the Scaling Scotland report, which is focused on the Scottish landscape, will contribute to that broader conversation.

“Scotland has world-class entrepreneurs. We need to ensure they have the support they need to break through and grow at pace. Working collaboratively, I believe we can make Scotland Europe’s best HQ for growing a business.”