#152: Building Scotland’s innovation economy and female-focused initiatives with Derek Shaw and Alison Loveday

Derek Shaw is Director of Entrepreneurship and Investment, where he leads the teams supporting Scotland's spinouts, startups, and scaling companies with wrap-around support and commercial investment. Under his leadership, Scottish Enterprise co-invests more than £50 million annually, making it Scotland’s most active early-stage investor, and the UK’s fourth largest by volume.

The portfolio includes around 330 high growth companies, valued at approximately half a billion pounds.

Alison Loveday is part of the extended management team and leads the National High Growth Entrepreneurship team. She focuses on ecosystem development, partnerships, and leadership programs for founders — including Pathways to Scale, a flagship initiative inspired by the 2023 Pathways Report, which supports female founders by upskilling leadership and investment readiness.

Together, they're helping to shape Scotland's innovation economy.

We cover the following:

00:11  Meet Derek Shaw and Alison Loveday

02:16  Overview of Scottish Enterprise

03:08 Scottish Enterprise's strategic missions

07:03 Supporting ambitious Scottish businesses

12:06  Collaborations and female founders

14:28  Challenges for deep tech companies

20:31  Case Study: ZOEX and Ash Penley

26:04 Working with universities and research centres

28:21  Metrics and measuring success

30:12  Supporting female founders

35:17  Lessons from recent successes

43:27 The future of Scotland's innovation economy.

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