Is the Scottish ICT industry sowing the seeds of its own demise ?
"You may not have noticed, but we’re currently sowing the seeds of the death of the Scottish ICT industry. Every year, we hasten its rate of decline. Every year, the systemic failures of the Scottish ICT community bring closer its increasingly-inevitable demise."
Hold on – isn’t the ICT industry one of Scotland’s few success stories? Comparatively, it’s faring particularly well in the teeth of the recession. Many of our indigenous companies are recruiting, and reporting growth. There’s a steady flow of sparky start-ups. All of which is encouraging, but it only masks the insidious threat – that we have allowed the image of our industry to become so poor and so distorted that it threatens the long-term viability of the industry itself, and the economic health of Scotland as a whole."
So argues former chair of ScotlandIS, Gerry Docherty. Now chair of Scottish Enterprise's ICT Markets Industry Advisory Group, he believes the industry has to start fighting back to address the endemic problems created by an outdated but deeply engrained image problem. Read his full commentary on the ScotlandIS blog and add your comments.