Glasgow has exceptional capacity for innovation and applied ingenuity.
For a medium sized city, Glasgow already produces an impressively wide range of world-class science and technology expertise. A runner-up for the European Capital of Innovation Award, Glasgow has commercial edges in nanotech, life sciences, digital media, energy and advanced manufacturing, is a global capital of the space and satellite industry and has a rapidly expanding Fintech and tech meetup scene. These sectors are served by Glasgow’s technology platform, breadth of technical skills and efficient regional scale. Over the past ten years, the BioCorridor has enabled the growth of MedTech, precision medicine, pharmaceutical services and industrial biotechnology and Glasgow’s overall innovation and start-up eco-system continues to improve, thanks to the pipeline of new Innovation Districts, improved networking, and policies to strengthen entrepreneurship. The kinds of sectors in which Glasgow has an edge continued to thrive and are driving long-term upgrades to the performance and competitiveness of the wider city region economy.
"According to Tech Nation, Glasgow is among the top three fastest-growing tech investment hubs in the UK."
"Glasgow has climbed nearly 70 places in the major measure of the overall strength of cities’ start-up ecosystems since 2017, making it the most improved among 7 of the UK core cities."
"There are already more Glasgow-built satellites in orbit than from any other city in Europe. With an HQ in the city, data company Spire Global has over 110 Lemur satellites currently in orbit."
"The new £11.9m Kelvin Hall Film and Broadcast Studio Hub will be operated by a commercial arm of the BBC. The aim is for the studio to become the Scottish hub for shows for the BBC, ITV, Sky, Channel 4 and Netflix."
"Glasgow City Innovation District plays host to 18 major research centres & innovation organisations and over 30 innovation companies and SMEs, including the UK’s only Fraunhofer site."
"Glasgow’s Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District will be home to a new £35m Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre, set to help solve major pharmaceutical industry challenges and accelerate access to affordable medicines."
"More than 380 Life Sciences companies within Glasgow city Region turn over £325m annually, employ over 10,000 people and represent over one third of Scotland’s total sector base (incl. 50% of MedTech companies)."
"The £1bn Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) campus, developed in partnership between NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and University of Glasgow, is the largest critical care complex in Western Europe."
"Dell Technologies, having established a global digital hub in Glasgow for over a decade, runs a 12-month mentoring programme - STEM Aspire - aimed at undergraduate females."
"The University of Strathclyde launched the UK’s first MSc in FinTech in 2017. By 2022 it is expected to have the largest number of doctoral researchers in the subject anywhere in the UK and possibly the world."
"Glasgow has joined a network of Future Cities around the world unlocking the potential of open data to explore innovative ways to use technology and data to make life in the city safer, smarter and more sustainable. From its state-of-the-art city operations centre to the creation of an innovative city data hub, Glasgow is developing a series of initiatives to showcase how technology can be used to make its streets safer, making it easier for people get active and improve their health and understanding how we can better use, save and generate energy."
"As of 2019, the number of new businesses starting up in Glasgow had increased by nearly 50% since 2011, and despite Covid-19, 153 more new businesses launched in 2020 than 2019 (opposite to the national trend)."
"Glasgow’s digital tech economy is the largest in Scotland and one of the fasted growing in the UK – it has almost 34,000 jobs and turns over more than £1 billion."
"Glasgow’s fintech ecosystem is growing at an unprecedented rate with over 50 firms based in the city specialising in asset management, investment operations, general insurance, shared services, business process outsourcing and the fast-growing areas of legal services and Fintech."
"A Glasgow based start-up (M Squared Lasers) was the first business to receive investment from the newly formed Scottish National Investment Bank, the UK’s first mission-led development bank."
"More than a quarter of Glasgow’s top 100 innovative technology firms are in financial and business services, the highest proportion among the UK core cities."
"More than 30% of Glasgow City Region’s innovative tech firms are in creative and cultural industries – more than 25% higher than the average across European regions."
"Glasgow City Region is home to just under 3,000 manufacturing companies with a combined turnover of over £10 billion, employing over 55,000 people with a GVA contribution of £3.5 billion."
"Glasgow has been identified as an ‘emerging ecosystem’ in the latest global start-up ecosystem report from Startup Genome, ahead of Oslo, Lyon and Calgary."
"Glasgow ranks 18th among mid-sized cities globally (or 8th among mid-sized European cities) for the scale and VC attraction capability of its green tech innovation ecosystem."
"Glasgow Science Centre is to become home to the UK’s first Newton Flight Academy, a permanent classroom used to teach students aviation-related STEM concepts."
"Research from Knight Frank has named Glasgow as the UK's second most innovative city outside of London. With excellent innovation infrastructure
and three universities benchmarked
against global standards (Glasgow
Caledonian, University of Strathclyde,
and University of Glasgow), it also
possesses a strong start-up community,
ranking highly across national rankings
of entrepreneurial ecosystems."
"The prevalence of academic institutions in the city is a core strength that fuels research and the transfer of ideas to market, with spinouts making up 7% of Glasgow’s high-growth population, far higher than the national average of 3%."
"Home to around 11% of Scotland’s population, Glasgow City punches above its weight for high-growth companies, hosting over 20% of active ambitious companies in the country."
"The city is a brilliant ecosystem for female entrepreneurs, with around 30% of high-growth firms (with known gender data) founded by at least one woman."
"Unlike other startup hubs across the country, the majority of female-founded businesses in Glasgow (70%) have an all-female founding team, rather than a mixed-gender founding team."
"Between January 2011 and December 2021, Glaswegian companies announced 263 fundraisings, totalling £341m. Almost a third of this figure, £105m, was deployed in 2021 alone."
"Glasgow has been named the best city in the UK in which to set up a small business (due to short commute time and growth of small businesses in recent years)."
"Bruntwood SciTech, the UK’s leading property and innovation services provider dedicated to driving the growth of the science and technology sector, unveiled a £76.2m plan for the purchase and regeneration of Glasgow’s famous Met Tower, to create a new tech and digital campus and marking Bruntwood SciTech’s first footprint and future community in Scotland."
"Glasgow has been evaluated as the 2nd best UK city for innovation outside of London, due to its strong start-up community, entrepreneurial spirit and excellent innovation infrastructure."
"Multi-cloud services provider Datavita has announced plans to open a new Glasgow data centre at 177 Bothwell Street. The data centre represents £6 million of investment from the company and will be Datavita’s second facility, adding to its acquisition of the Fortis data centre in Lanarkshire in 2021."