Technology ecosystem review - Towards the Tipping Point: progress report

Glossary

Ecosystem

Within the STER report the tech ecosystem refers, in its widest sense, to a system that supports and nurtures technology businesses in Scotland, from the early start-up phase through to fully scaled maturity. Participants in that ecosystem include Government, start-ups, investors, universities, enterprise agencies, conferences, ecosystem builder and corporate companies.

Internet Economics & Silicon Valley Playbook

We use this term to characterise a certain approach to product development and management. It is characterised by a strong focus on speed of iteration within a business context, on organisational agility at all levels of scale, on a relentless pursuit of product-market fit, on the application of modern growth engineering techniques such as the exploitation of compounding growth mechanisms, and on a very high degree of data-driven experimentation, to highlight just a few examples. Another short-hand term that could be applied to summarise these practices is The Silicon Valley Playbook. The Silicon Valley Playbook, though many of these techniques originated in the tech sector, increasingly, high growth companies across all sectors are seeking to apply them to scale their businesses.

Tech Start-up

Start-ups are generally early-stage companies with growth potential that exhibit – or aspire to exhibit – certain attributes and characteristics common to successful tech startups internationally. These attributes are:

• Develops a product or service with a high degree of software engineering required to develop it.
• Aspires to operate according to Internet Economy methodologies (see definition of Internet Economics).

Scale-up

Scale-ups are companies that are further along the growth trajectory compared to early-stage start-ups and will have already experienced growth, with a commitment to continue on that growth-trajectory.

TechScaler

World-class incubation and developmental environments for high-growth internet economy start-ups. Tech-scalers will provide a mix of commercial education, physical co-location, peer learning, networking and the capacity for full virtual access to highgrowth businesses all over Scotland.

Tipping-point

Technology ecosystems exist in one of two states. The ‘tipping-point’ is the point at which the ecosystem hosts a critical mass of viable start-ups and scale-ups attracting external talent and investment.