Presentation to The Society of Writers to Her Majesty\'s Signet. 27th October 2010

1. Thinking Differently:
Informatics, Disruption and Entrepreneurship
Andrew Mitchell 27/10/2010 The WS Society
andrew.mitchell@ed.ac.uk 07793111386 @roomitchell

2. Disruption
VCs and Super Angels seek at least 10X RoI.
For this they need companies that disrupt industries and markets.
Disruptive Innovation
Informatics in Edinburgh
Scots inventiveness & the elusive software Co of Scale

3. Disruptive Innovation:
Enabling a larger population of less-skilled people to do things usually
performed by specialists; and do this quicker, faster and cheaper.

4. Informatics:- the study of how natural and artificial systems
store, process and communicate information; a new
enlightenment in scholarship and learning, central to the future
of science, technology and society (CS, AI, CogSci).
In the age of information, computing technology is
changing the ways we work and play. Informatics is
changing the way we think.
Life as a model for compuation, computation as a model for life.
Informatics: thinking differently

5. Informatics: commercial applications

6. Informatics: commercial applications

7. Scale – Largest Computer Science research centre in Europe
More World Leading and Internationally Excellent Research than any other
UK university (44% more than nearest competitor)
10% of all UK, World Leading research in 1 centre
470+ Academic and Research Staff
>250+ current PhD’s
160+ Masters level students
~190 1st
year undergraduates
~100 Informatics BSc’s graduating each year
Excellence – Leads the UK in world leading research
Largest grouping of 4*, 69% more “World Leading” research than # 2
Rated ‘Excellent’ in SHEFC Quality Assessment for teaching
#1 in Guardian survey 2010 for teaching
Informatics in Edinburgh

8. 726 students registered for this
session including 333 students
from 60 countries outside the UK
People’s Republic
of China - 39
Greece - 35 India - 30 USA - 29Germany - 29 Italy - 16 Poland - 16 France - 11 Bulgaria - 9
Republic of Ireland - 8 Mexico - 7 Pakistan - 6 Spain - 6 Netherlands - 5 Thailand - 5 Canada - 4 Lithuania - 4Colombia - 3
Malaysia - 4Luxembourg - 4 Nigeria - 3 Portugal - 3 Taiwan - 3Cyprus - 3 Japan - 3Austria - 3 Malta - 3
Belarus - 2 Estonia - 2 Romania - 2Denmark - 2 Israel - 2 Republic of Korea - 2 Singapore - 2 South Africa - 2 Sweden - 2
UK - 393
Czech Republic - 1 Finland - 1Belgium - 1Albania - 1 Australia - 1 Bahamas - 1 Bahrain - 1 Bangladesh - 1 Brazil - 1
Jordan - 1 Latvia - 1Indonesia - 1 Islamic Republic of Iran - 1 Lebanon - 1 Macedonia - 1 Mauritius - 1 New Zealand - 1
Sri Lanka - 1 Ukraine - 1 Venezuela - 1Russia - 1 Slovenia - 1 Turkey - 1 Uzbekistan - 1
342 Undergraduates
384 Postgraduate

9. Canada - 1Australia - 2 Chile - 1
Argentina - 1
Colombia - 1People’s Republic
of China - 7
Croatia - 1 Denmark - 1 France - 3 Germany - 16 Greece - 5 Hong Kong - 1
India - 6 Republic of Ireland - 1 Italy - 3 Japan - 1 Jordan - 1 Mauritius - 1
Netherlands - 3 Poland - 3 Portugal - 1 Romania - 1 Russia - 5 Slovenia - 1
Spain - 2 Sri Lanka - 1 Sweden - 2 Taiwan - 2 Ukraine - 1 USA - 23
UK - 201
Taught by the brightest and best from all over the world

12. So what!
Excellence in research and inventiveness of Scots
Yet no company of scale in informatics space

13. But! It’s changing.
University of Edinburgh:
Record-breaking 40 spinouts and startups in 2009/10
16 of which are from the School of Informatics.
33 School of Informatics spinouts/startups since 2006

14. Company creation progress:
10 year Targets - close to being hit within 4 years 2006-2010:
Spin Outs: 9 employees: 26 FTE
Start Ups: 24 employees: 56 FTE
Total: 33 employees: 82 FTE
Products developed 83
Spin out funding: £1.437M Revenue: £1.035M
Start Up funding: £3.165M Revenue: £0.884M
Total Funding: £4.602M Revenue: £1.919M

15. Entrepreneurship Education as a Contact Sport
Over 60 events and workshops Sep 2008 to Oct 2010.
Informatics Ventures has delivered 23,700 hours of executive
entrepreneurship education to 853 participants from 547
companies.
6,000 focused interactions with 150 investors & serial entre’

16. techmeetup.co.uk
EDI / ABZ / GLA
Global
Entrepreneurship
Team
Engage
Invest
Exploit
girlgeekscotland.co.uk
Residential workshops
demoFEST
Research
Knowledge Exchange
Vendor Support
For Startups
e.g. Microsoft BizSpark
Sip / Selection of things Informatics Ventures organise or support:

17. Entrepreneurs in Residence: for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs
Ian Ritchie
Derek Gray
Crawford Beveridge
Gerry Docherty
Martin Ritchie
David Simpson
Colin Adams
David Milne

18. Annual Investor Conference: Engage Invest Exploit
75 companies have ‘exhibited’ across EIE ‘08, ‘09 and ‘10.
£11 million equity finance raised by these companies
16 companies pitched – raised £4 million
£2 million worth of deals directly attributed to intros at EIE

19. The opportunity we recognise (EIE’10 Informatics Forum, 12th
May 2010)
"Scotland is number one in the world for research impact per
GDP.
What do we do with the knowledge... we have a golden egg
and we are ignoring it.”
Professor Anne Glover
Chief Scientific Advisor for Scotland
“And you have an opportunity (to build the ecosystem) in
Edinburgh, there’s no question in my mind that is true. It’s a
combination of having the academic excellence, having the local
finance, having the entrepreneurs and having a global view of
building business”
Anne M Glover
Co-founder and Chief Executive Amadeus Capital Partners

20. Can Scotland Disrupt?
Andrew Mitchell 27/10/2010 The WS Society
andrew.mitchell@ed.ac.uk 07793111386 @roomitchell

21. Andrew Mitchell
Informatics Ventures
http://www.informatics-ventures.com/
mobile: +44(0)7793111386
e-mail: andrew.mitchell@ed.ac.uk
twitter: http://twitter.com/roomitchell/