Scotland has developed into a booming hub for AI and quantum research, driven by the strength of the universities across the Edinburgh-Glasgow central belt and the country playing host to two of the UK’s five quantum hubs.
But one of the biggest challenges for innovators there is scaling products from an early-stage research concept into a scalable startup.
"The biggest barrier to commercialisation from a university setting is the lack of commercial skills and experience required to do so. To convince somebody who is at the top of their field to take a different path as an entrepreneur isn't always as straightforward as we might want,” says Andrew Parfery, SVP Commercial & University Lead at Scottish growth platform CodeBase.
To support academic founders making the move into entrepreneurship, the University of Edinburgh in partnership with the Scottish government startup programme Techscaler and CodeBase, offer the Venture Builder Incubator (VBI), a five-month programme supporting deeptech founders in Scotland. Sifted sat down with Parfery, alongside Shivoh Nandakumar, founder of robotic AI company Ridescan AI, and Eva Steele, cofounder of AI biotech startup Amytis, to unpack how Scottish entrepreneurs can turn their research into scalable businesses. Nandakumar and Steele took part in the VBI programme and benefitted from Techscaler support which included mentorship and access to international programmes.Turning academic research into commercial successFor Steele and Nandakumar, taking a research project to market required identifying a problem and how it could be solved.
