Event round-up: Meet the Innovators LIVE, Glasgow
Held as part of Glasgow Tech Week 2025 and hosted by Barclays Eagle Labs, Meet the Innovators LIVE brought together founders, investors, civic leaders and ecosystem builders for a morning of networking, panel discussions, and startup showcases.
The agenda featured an opening overview of Glasgow’s tech landscape from Alisdair Gunn (Director of Glasgow City Innovation District), a fireside chat with Barbara Mills (Deputy Programme Director at CivTech Scotland), and a panel discussion with local innovators sharing practical insights on scaling, investment, and emerging technologies.
Our panellists also demonstrated their products, enabling attendees to experience some of Glasgow’s most exciting technological innovations for themselves. These included VR headsets, video games, and wind panel technology.
The event was the first of a spin-out series building upon the success of techUK’s Meet the Innovators video interview series, which showcases how member companies such as Samsung and RiVR are leading on building and supporting the UK’s innovation ecosystem.
Below are the key topics and themes that emerged throughout the morning.
🏗️ Building Glasgow’s Innovation Ecosystem
- Strong foundations in sectors like healthtech, advanced manufacturing, space, semiconductors, cleantech, and AI.
- Emphasis on deep tech requiring specialised expertise, with investment trends shifting beyond software to hardware and scientific innovation.
- Local mapping work (e.g. Glasgow City Region’s data hub) highlighted bottom-up analysis of companies and emerging clusters.
- Strategic focus on place-based development, supported by initiatives such as Innovation Districts, incubators and accelerators.
💸 Investment and Growth Challenges
- Access to early-stage capital, particularly for deep tech, remains a key barrier.
- Angel investors need to understand demands for greater capital intensity.
- Importance of building a connected investor network, including global capital, to sustain the founder pipeline.
- Local and national investment schemes (Scottish Enterprise, British Business Bank) supporting growth, but gaps remain, especially for scaling.
🤝 The Role of Collaboration and Place
- Emphasis on partnership: public sector, academia, investors and industry aligning to build capacity.
- Need for collaboration across UK regions to manage space constraints in hubs like Cambridge and attract overspill growth.
- Calls for better connectivity between Glasgow’s ecosystem and wider UK and international innovation networks.
🌍 Public Sector Innovation as Opportunity
- CivTech Scotland spotlighted as a model for turning public-sector challenges into business opportunities.
- Structured challenge process enables companies (from startups to SMEs) to develop solutions with the public sector as first customer.
- Examples ranged from tree health monitoring to menopause support services.
- Future ambitions to expand into platform-level and policy-led innovation, tackling systemic challenges with collaborative approaches.
🚀 Innovator Perspectives
Panel discussions with local founders highlighted:
- Challenges of raising early-stage and scale-up capital, often requiring international investor engagement.
- Value of public funding and networks (e.g. SDI, Barclays Eagle Labs) in opening markets.
- Talent strengths in Scotland’s universities, but competition for senior technical roles remains tough.
- Importance of cultural fit and meaningful projects to attract and retain specialist talent.
🧭 Emerging Technology Trends
- AI and machine learning seen as critical across sectors—from renewable energy site planning to games development workflows.
- Quantum technologies with potential to transform encryption and communication (e.g. quantum key distribution).
- Sustainable innovation focus: carbon capture, hydrogen, circular design in manufacturing.
- Connectivity advances (5G slicing, low-earth-orbit satellite links) opening up new business models, especially in rural and remote contexts.
💬 Final Reflections
The event reinforced the need for:
- Deeper collaboration across companies, investors, academia and government.
- Strategic, sustained investment in both early-stage innovation and the infrastructure to scale.
- Ensuring public-sector demand can drive private innovation with real-world impact.
- Celebrating Glasgow’s strengths while addressing systemic barriers to make it a globally competitive tech hub.
Click here to find out more about techUK’s Nations & Regions and Tech & Innovation activity.
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Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.
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Today, Rory leads techUK's emerging technologies activity across everything from immersive, web3, AI and robotics to space, gaming & metaverse.
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Rory Daniels
Rory Daniels
Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.
During this time, Rory worked on the Government's response to Covid-19 (NHS Test & Trace), school funding strategy (Department for Education) and international climate and nature policy (Cabinet Office). He also tackled the social care crisis whilst on secondment to techUK's Health and Social Care programme in 2022.
Before this, Rory worked in the House of Commons and House of Lords alongside completing degrees in Political Economy and Global Politics.
Today, Rory leads techUK's emerging technologies activity across everything from immersive, web3, AI and robotics to space, gaming & metaverse.
This involves co-running techUK's flagship Innovation campaign, managing four series (including the 'Meet the Innovators' interview series), and launching 4-6-month 'sprint campaigns' on transformative technologies and sectors.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rorydaniels28/
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Get in touch below to find out more about techUK's future plans in this space.
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Get in touch
Rory Daniels
Rory Daniels
Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.
During this time, Rory worked on the Government's response to Covid-19 (NHS Test & Trace), school funding strategy (Department for Education) and international climate and nature policy (Cabinet Office). He also tackled the social care crisis whilst on secondment to techUK's Health and Social Care programme in 2022.
Before this, Rory worked in the House of Commons and House of Lords alongside completing degrees in Political Economy and Global Politics.
Today, Rory leads techUK's emerging technologies activity across everything from immersive, web3, AI and robotics to space, gaming & metaverse.
This involves co-running techUK's flagship Innovation campaign, managing four series (including the 'Meet the Innovators' interview series), and launching 4-6-month 'sprint campaigns' on transformative technologies and sectors.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rorydaniels28/
Running from February to June 2025, this sprint campaign is exploring how the UK can lead on the development, application and commercialisation of robotic & automation technologies.
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Get in touch below to get involved or find out more about techUK's future plans in this space.
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Get in touch
Rory Daniels
Rory Daniels
Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.
During this time, Rory worked on the Government's response to Covid-19 (NHS Test & Trace), school funding strategy (Department for Education) and international climate and nature policy (Cabinet Office). He also tackled the social care crisis whilst on secondment to techUK's Health and Social Care programme in 2022.
Before this, Rory worked in the House of Commons and House of Lords alongside completing degrees in Political Economy and Global Politics.
Today, Rory leads techUK's emerging technologies activity across everything from immersive, web3, AI and robotics to space, gaming & metaverse.
This involves co-running techUK's flagship Innovation campaign, managing four series (including the 'Meet the Innovators' interview series), and launching 4-6-month 'sprint campaigns' on transformative technologies and sectors.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rorydaniels28/
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