Helping Scotland to achieve its deep tech potential
Published: 29 May 2026
From photonics and quantum to life sciences, AI and space, Adam Smith Business School researchers are identifying what’s needed to help Scotland’s deep tech sector reach its full potential.
From photonics and quantum to life sciences, AI and space, Adam Smith Business School researchers are identifying what’s needed to help Scotland’s deep tech sector reach its full potential.
Scotland has built a strong foundation in deep tech - technology based on tangible engineering innovation or scientific advances and discoveries applied for the first time as a product, often aiming to solve society’s biggest issues.
Although 60% of venture capital invested in Scotland currently goes to the sector, translating that strength into scaled companies and sustained economic impact remains an open challenge.
To enable Scotland to achieve its full deep tech potential, researchers at University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School have identified industry strengths, barriers to success, and how these can be addressed.
The findings are summarised in the Scottish Deep Tech 2026 report, to be launched this week, in collaboration with Dealroom.
The report provides a detailed evidence base on the current state of Scotland’s deep tech ecosystem, including where it is working, where it is not, and what needs to change.
Researchers have identified five main approaches to funding, ownership, governance, and pathways to market to convert Scotland’s deep tech research into lasting economic value:
Develop deep tech leaders specifically built for scale: Scotland needs structured team formation programmes, sector-specific commercial talent pipelines, and postgraduate and executive education designed for the scale-up phase, equipping both founders and the operational and commercial leaders that deep tech ventures need to grow.
Build commercial and technical literacy across the full value chain: Skills investment should extend beyond the innovator to every actor deep tech ventures depend on — investors, procurement officers, supply chain partners, and regulators - so that the wider ecosystem can engage with and support deep tech companies as they scale.
Fix the infrastructure access problem: Scotland's deep tech facilities are underutilised not because companies cannot find them but because pricing, design and governance models do not serve the companies that need them. Operating models need to change as much as investment levels do.
Make Scotland a first customer for its own innovations: Scotland's public sector procurement power should be directed toward creating first-customer pathways for domestic deep tech companies, anchoring innovations at home before they follow investment elsewhere.
Develop a distinctively Scottish understanding of deep tech innovation futures: Scotland needs sustained social science research into how deep tech functions here – from the institutions and financing structures; to the organisational models, and governance arrangements that shape it – so that future ecosystem interventions can be designed from Scottish conditions rather than imported from contexts that don't apply.
Dr Gemma Milne, Lecturer in Innovation and Technology Management said: "Scotland already has world-class deep tech expertise and infrastructure. What it needs is a development model built for its own context: one that draws on lessons from elsewhere without importing them wholesale, takes Scotland seriously as a deep tech leader in its own right, and is as imaginative about the institutions that steward deep tech as about the science they support. Done well, the benefits land both at home and worldwide."
Professor Dominic Chalmers said: “At the Adam Smith Business School we see a huge opportunity to develop and support the deep tech ecosystem. We will adapt and apply our expertise across management, organisation and economics to meet the unique needs of long cycle technology businesses, helping them to develop the human capital to thrive.”
First published: 29 May 2026