Jim Rowan reflects on his experience as a serial technology entrepreneur at Blackberry, Dyson and Volvo Cars and recalls the time 30 years ago when Scotland had a ‘Silicon Glen’.
Full speech transcript
Okay, so today I was asked to share my story. It’s a story that includes education, engineering, opportunity and the skills and the work ethic that I developed as a Scot building a global career in technology. My hope is that it translates today somewhat into the challenges and the opportunities that we see both as a nation but also as a society in general.
I’ve entitled this from Glasgow to Gothenburg with a few stops in between. Education that leads to knowledge that can be applied to drive innovation which in turn leads to invention that with scale can lead to national prosperity I believe is the key. So let’s start with that.
Let’s start with education. In my family, my oldest sister was the first person on either side of her parents history to attend university. She did so in this fine city at Strathclyde University and later go on to complete a PhD in chemistry which fuelled a lifelong career in research and development.
That was the first fracture in the premise that the past defines the future and our family grew that day, our family tree grew not a new branch but it grew new roots which were going to be nourished by education. My further education initially took the vocational route and I completed a mechanical engineering apprenticeship on the south side of this city working for a company that made heavy industrial equipment for sugar refineries and the then dwindling shipbuilding industry. It was a cold, grimy, noisy factory but with many brilliantly skilled machine workers punching time cards simultaneously on tickets to maximise piecework bonus payments.
Time bonus calculations all done mentally to within the penny. To add to the Dickensian vibe we also had a few very unsavoury characters as part of this tapestry. Let’s just say it was a learning rich environment but at high expectations of work ethic, performance, problem solving and the need to be able to stand up for yourself at a very early age and of course it was fully unionised or, to quote the terminology of the era, a closed shop.
It was a factory like many others in the city at that time and those factories provided for those of us who hadn’t quite decided or figured out what we want to do in life other than secure an income and perhaps keep learning. Unfortunately since then the vocational route into industry and indeed into senior management has greatly diminished and with that many of the options now open to young people taking the first steps into their working life. Now while I don’t suggest going backwards towards the cold, noisy, grimy factories of the past I do encourage creating many more and new innovative opportunities for young talent to find their footing in addition to the opportunities of full-time college or university.
I would also encourage widening the college and university curriculum to include more skills and experiential events to enable students to be more battle ready for industry and commerce at a young age thereby allowing them and the nation to complete on a global stage. But above all I would encourage accelerating the knowledge base concerning four things software, silicon, connectivity and data. The interrelationship between these four items is what will drive the biggest development in technologies for decades to come including AI in all its forms. Gen AI, agentic AI, AGI and at some point ASI or artificial superintelligence, and that’s the part that gets scary.
These will significantly disrupt almost every single industry in every job and it will profoundly change the way in which we learn as human beings. Now in my career development the single biggest opportunity came to me was when Scotland realising the demise of shipbuilding, coal mining and steelworks started to develop a strategy designed to attract industrial technologies of the future. Companies like IBM in Greenock, Motorola in Bathgate, Sun Microsystems in Linlithgow, Compaq computers in Erskine and in my own case Digital Equipment Corporation in the fair town of Ayr, where ner a toon surpasses for honest men and bonnie lasses.
These companies in turn created a huge ecosystem to serve as the large needs of the corporations and created opportunities of employment options and quite often these companies were homegrown Scottish companies who acted quickly to leverage the opportunities provided by these large multinationals. Two of my own startups fell into that category and I as well as many others saw the change in landscape for what it was, a highway to the future with a fast lane towards a potentially new international career. Although young I had already been armed with an apprentice qualification, an HNC in engineering, a strong work ethic, expectations of high performance and of course the ability to work with all manner of characters from my shop floor experience. With Digital Equipment Corporation as a catalyst towards learning and building my competence in new technology this set in motion a career that would allow me to live and work in five different countries across three continents working at C level for some of the world’s most innovative companies, BlackBerry in Canada, Dyson in Singapore and Volvo Cars in Sweden.
Now I would have been happy to stay in Scotland and build my career here but unfortunately the foundations that created the investment structure for what at the time and you can see me here was called Silicon Glen did not allow for that. It was not strong enough to support the future growth or any signs of real longevity and today the vast majority of the companies shown in this chart no longer exist in Scotland. For although these international technology companies brought factory jobs the conditions and the structure of continual investment into the country was not tethered to the long-term needs of building the deeper competencies, the likes of product development, design, engineering or even supply chain management.
All of these roles stayed mainly in the home countries and as the now famous saying is – designed in California, manufactured in China. Previously that could have said manufactured in Cumbernauld. As a result when Eastern Europe opened up and cheaper labour pools could be found there to serve as the large consumer economies of Europe then all the jobs moved,and I like many others from Scotland followed.
Talent, technology and tax dollars flowed in the same direction at which point in time I had more Scottish friends living in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic than I had back home here in Scotland. By contrast Ireland directly connected tax incentives not easily to replicate to investments and these weren’t easy to replicate in Eastern Europe and that provided much more stickiness and longevity for the Celtic tiger. But learning from others can be of great advantage and as the saying goes the early bird may get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese – which brings us to today.
The new technologies of today and indeed the future have created a very fertile landscape for those countries which are curious enough to understand the opportunities, bold enough to develop a strategy and brave enough to embrace and invest. Singapore where I lived for over a decade and served as an advisor to the Economic Development Board stands as a beacon to how this can be achieved but it requires several factors not yet in place in Scotland, not least of which is a sovereign wealth fund. Well funded, well constructed and well managed.
This construct of a sovereign wealth fund differs greatly from the National Wealth Fund, the SNIB or Scotland’s Shared Prosperity Fund and we need to think bigger, much much bigger. By contrast and comparison Singapore which is approximately 20 percent smaller than North Ayrshire boasts a combined sovereign wealth fund of over one trillion pounds or 1.3 trillion dollars between GIC, Temasek and CPF. Norway has a population almost identical to Scotland and has a sovereign wealth fund of 1.7 trillion dollars.
But investment for the future on its own won’t be enough, we also must act quickly to close the widening productivity gap between the UK and specifically the US as well as some European countries. Today that productivity gap between the UK and the USA sits between 22 and 28 percent and 10 percent lower than Germany. Without improving the productivity gap the long-term value creation will become infinitely harder.
In addition as Dan mentioned earlier to public sector to private sector funding ratio on R&D investment also lags greatly behind most developed countries. So the positive side there is a plethora of choice for a country with intellectual horsepower and learning capacity such as Scotland to invest and embrace. These technologies include multi-discipline software development, low latency connectivity, cloud computation, energy and grid management, small modular reactors, hydrogen power, electrolysis, battery power management, quantum computing, next generation semiconductors, nano technologies, all manner of different types of sensors, low power lidar, 4D radar, cost reducing edge computing and of course AI and all its wonderful technicolour.
So today lies massive advantage for Scotland and indeed the UK as a whole. At this moment in time there’s a potent cocktail designed to our advantage that can enable a new wave of prosperity for our country and to make this simple and because I like alliteration I’ve termed this the eight L’s of longevity and these are one. Legislation.
Scotland and the UK are not restricted by having to align 27 member states to any revised legislation. This should enable speed and competitiveness. Owning its own currency should be another potential advantage.
Two, learning. The great learning institutes of Scotland provide a bedrock upon which we can build but build we must.
Three, legacy. We have a history of innovation and turning innovation into invention. History gives us penicillin, the television, the telephone, the steam engine, world changing inventions, but we look too much to the past to remind ourself of our innovative DNA. Rather than inspire new thinking we have to some extent romanticised this.
The constant recycle of these great achievements risk being akin to having a picture of Bonnie Prince Charlie on the side of a biscuit tin. It is now time for the next chapter in Scottish innovation to be written. It’s time to create a new list that our children will develop and that our great our grandchildren and great grandchildren will recite these new changing inventions as eloquently and as frequently as we have done with the past.
Four, law. We operate in an environment recognised the world over as fair and just and governed by the rule of law and in today’s turbulent world that in itself holds real value.
Five, leverage. Scotland as part of the United Kingdom, London as a financial powerhouse, the UK as part of the G7 and a nuclear nation, as part of the Commonwealth, building ties and rebuilding ties with Europe and hopefully maintaining good relationship with both China and the USA brings political and commercial leverage. Once again I would cite Singapore where I saw firsthand how a very small country like Singapore used its political leverage and its international reputation to great advantage.
Six, language. Let’s not forget the tremendous advantage that comes from being a native English speaking nation.
Seven, labour. We have the means to future develop a highly educated skilled workforce with the strong work ethic and a character to succeed that can compete in any world stage with passion and with vigour and with purpose.
And finally eight, logistics. We’re positioned in a time zone that allows daily connectivity between east and west with robust road and rail links that link us to Europe both directly from Glasgow and from four airports in London. These are advantages of the logistics of today.
But to bring this vision alive we need to enable a young talent to embrace these opportunities and engage in the journey. A journey that can create something special and long-lasting, future-proof for the next generation. But many of our young people today are out of practisewhat it takes to be successful in the global stage.
In the last three years alone I have travelled to China 14 times and visited eight cities in China. From every visit it was clear that speed including the speed of learning is at the very epicentre of their thinking. This brings me back to education in all its forms. We need to educate our young people not just in the technical tools and the business skills of tomorrow but in the basic building blocks of how to work effectively together to build a culture of shared prosperity.
Individualism, digital nomads, scrolling as a form of entertainment, working from home has all torn a fabric in the cultural collaboration and we need to mend this. Over the years I’ve been asked many, many times by young people – how do I progress? How do I get promoted? How do I get recognised for my contributions? But many things to be successful need absolutely zero talent whatsoever. Hard work, attention to detail, showing up in time, being willing to help others, building a network and having integrity, being transparent, being open-minded, being presentable, investing in personal hygiene.
You don’t need any of these to be successful in terms of talent but of course many people already do that. So I will leave you with this for the benefit of maybe the younger people who are coming into industry for the first time to answer some of these questions. Again being a massive fan of alliteration I’m going to leave you with my eight C’s of character building.
One, commitment. There is no substitute for hard work and hard work beats talent especially when talent doesn’t work hard. The job is not done until the job is done and there is a huge difference between motivation and self-discipline. Doing what needs to be done when you have absolutely zero motivation to get it done is when it gets tough but that’s when it counts. Working hard when no one’s looking, that is the difference and it’s a key skill for young people to develop.
Collaboration. Despite what your parents and your grandmother may have told you it’s not all about you, it’s about the team, it’s about the mission, it’s about the outcome. Communication is the key skill to learning and how we really listen to others. Compassion, a much underrated skill in the business world is not a soft skill, it’s a life skill for compassion is empathy put into action.
Curiosity is the catalyst for continuous learning so please don’t be afraid to take a sideways move, a down move or any move that leads to more learning and skills, gaining greater experience or building a stronger network.
Courage, be prepared to speak truth to power and be prepared for the consequences that often come from that.
Consistency, follow through as it builds trust and trust is the single best currency you can build as an individual.
Finally confidence, believe in yourself, invest in yourself and trust in yourself for if you can’t trust in yourself how can you expect others to possibly do so. Now it’s my firm belief that today amidst all the turbulence, the geopolitics and the uncertainty there lies fantastic opportunities ahead. Companies and countries that find ways to invest in the key talents and technologies of the future will harvest these benefits for years to come.
The combination of high computational silicon, artificial intelligence, low latency cloud connectivity and energy security will provide the foundations to accelerate growth and prosperity like we’ve never seen before. I would go as far as to say that what happens in the next five years will define the industrial and the military landscape for the next 25 years. Thank you.
