Scotland – it never ceases to surprise me

I should confess that while I am not Scottish I would quite fancy being Scottish for a while.

The Scots, like the Irish, are renowned for being people who love to live life to the fullest. They produce God’s finest water (Scottish whiskys are seeing their exports to the US and most others markets rocket up), have some of the finest golf courses, the finest Salmon and a rather delicious – if illegal in the US-dish called Haggis.

While these are all marvellous things, they are still clearly secondary to being able to wear a kilt and speaking like Ewan McGregor.

I jest about these things but this has been a good year for Scotland. Skyfall, the latest Bond film, had some terrific scenes of Scotland. It showed how there is so much more to Scotland’s Green heritage than meets the eye.

Although my job is not promoting tourism to the UK, it is encouraging trade and investment between the UK and the US. Luckily for me, Scotland holds just as many hidden gems in its business circles as it does breathtaking backdrops for movies.

Last week we hosted the RT Hon Michael Moore, Secretary of State for Scotland, in Washington. He helps promote great Scottish Businesses and attract investment when he travels, and he also gets to see and hear about great success stories throughout the world.

Moore made a special stop to Optos, an Optometrists in Springfield, Virginia, to witness first hand some first class UK excellence in life sciences in action. He tested the Scottish company’s latest product, the Daytona. It is their newest ultra-widefield retinal imaging device, and scans approximately 82 per cent of the retina within a single image, something no other imaging device can equal.

It is cutting edge and would definitely not be about of place in a Bond film. Best of all, it is made in Scotland.

Another pleasant surprise was hearing about the large number of investors in Scotland. Our Secretary met with Honeywell, one of the world’s largest engineering groups that produces products linked to global challenges such as safety, security and energy.

Honeywell employs nearly a thousand people in Scotland and several thousand more across the UK. Scottish talent helps to innovate, design and manufacture controls for domestic central heating systems to switches and solid state sensors for advanced avionics that are exported around the world.

While preparing for the Secretary’s arrival, I was reading up on the latest news surrounding IT companies investing in Scotland.

In the 1980s, there was much talk of Silicon Glen, Scotland’s answer to Silicon Valley due to the influx of semi conductor businesses and a wider ICT cluster. The term doesn’t seem to be used as much as it used to, but Scotland continues to capture investment from major IT players.

Across sectors, Scotland is doing very well – over the last 12 months there were major investments from Amazon, FMC Technologies and State Street, as well as dozens of other investment projects. Contrary to the title of this blog, this shouldn’t be surprising when you think of the skills, stable business environment and the competitive price of doing business in Scotland but it is the quality and scale of the investments for such a small country that really do stand out.

Scotland is home to some of the UK’s most exciting businesses and clusters that help make the UK one of the best places in the world to start and run a business.

This will be my last blog of 2012 so best wishes for 2013 – if you want a surprising and outstanding place to celebrate try Scotland – their “Hogmanay” celebrations rival any others anywhere!