 Good morning, everyone, and welcome. I am Funa Hyslop. I'm the deputy convener of the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee, and I'd like to welcome you all to this special online edition of the Festival of Politics 2021, in partnership with the Parliament's Think Tank, Scotland's Future Forum. This afternoon's panel is titled Big Brains for Big Solutions to Save the World and is held in partnership with the Royal Society of Edinburgh. We are delighted that so many people are able to join us online today, and I look forward to hearing comments and questions from you as we get into our discussion, and we look forward to receiving questions and comments. How will academia, industry and event come together and build on the growing momentum to come up with the solutions that will save the planet from the climate crisis? What are the barriers that our investors joining us today have already overcome to grow their respective businesses? The panel aims to address all those questions in the next 60 minutes, so do stay with us. We are delighted that you are all able to join us to take part. I would encourage you all to use the event chat function to introduce yourself, state your name, your geographical location and pose any questions that you would like the panel to respond to. I am very pleased to be joined by our panellist, Pierre Paslier, Innovation and Design Engineer and Co-Founder of NOPLA, Dr Olga Kozlova, director of innovation and industry engagement at the University of Strathclyde, David Farker, chief executive of intelligent growth solutions, and Dr Jacinda Pawan-Tamvada, associate professor in strategy and innovation at the University of Southampton. There will be an opportunity for our online audience to put questions and views to the panel throughout the event. If you would like to make a contribution, please enter that in the question and answer box. Make sure to state your first name and where you are this afternoon and this morning, and we will get through that as quickly as possible and as many as possible. I want to begin by asking each of our panellists to respond to the following, please. Inventions in business from plastics to pesticides were not always kind to the environment, but now we need inventors and business to meet the new challenge of the climate emergency. Is that key collaboration between academia, entrepreneurs and investors taking place across the UK, or are we lagging behind the rest of the world in that respect? First of all, I want to come to Pierre. Pierre, could you kick off on that question? Thanks for having me. I think that the UK is definitely a great place to be. We wouldn't have started this business here if we didn't think that there was something great to do. I think that innovation is hard. Inventions are taking a lot of time. Unfortunately, when it's harder to hire or it's harder to move around with the rest of the world and collaborate, it makes it harder to make things easier. I think the UK has a very great de facto position in the world because of the past history of connectivity with the rest of the world. I think that this will continue, but we are definitely seeing that there are still some obstacles for small startups to work with academia, to work with international investors and to accelerate because, especially for climate change, plastic pollution, the clock is ticking and we have to be very fast. It's a pity that there are still a few obstacles to go faster. Thanks, Pierre. I think that that's a really important point about connectivity and connection creating the opportunities for creativity and innovation. That's been a challenge because obviously the pandemic as well. Can I maybe bring Oga? Could you respond to that? Then I'll come to David after that. Thank you. I think that there is a lot that UK universities can do in order to support that innovation towards the net zero. I think that a lot is being done. Certainly the universities are now part of what we call a triple helix approach, where the industry, academia and government come together in terms of solving big societal problems and climate emergencies, probably one of the biggest, where at the moment a lot of efforts and resources are being put towards. We certainly see a significant amount of innovative ideas emerging from the research base and moving towards commercialisation. I think that there is always room for improvement by certainly, through some of the initiatives such as innovation centres in Scotland or UK counterparts, the academia industry and investors do come together. I think that where we particularly excel at the new stages because there is quite a lot of capital available from the business angels. I think when it's become more difficult when you're scaling up these businesses and there is a requirement for really large amounts of capital, particularly for some of their infrastructure projects, and that's where the availability of finance is becoming a challenge. But I can see that people are coming together and this, what I would call net zero ecosystem, is really coming together. I suppose that the issue we might come on to is pace and scale and does that allow us to be optimistic or not. If we can come to David next and then I'll come to you, Jag. David? Hi, thanks Fiona. IGS, I can only really speak from our perspective. I'm not an academic and I wouldn't say that I'm a UK-wide R&D expert, but certainly from our point of view, the business was founded in 2013 and was based upon R&D investment and innovation right from the get-go. We started by working with the physics department at St Andrew's to try and get on top of the whole issue of LED lighting, so what my company does is vertical farming, which means that we're growing things in an enclosed box, so we have to make the weather, the sun, the wind and the rain, so we need artificial means of doing this. We've had to innovate six subsystems. We've got to make the wind, we've got to make the rain, we've got to make the sunshine, we've got to have software that controls it, we have to manage our energy usage and power, and then we have to have robotics and automated handling. So there are six areas in which we're having to innovate, and then we've got to bring the whole thing together to make sure that we can grow economically viable, environmentally sustainable, healthy, tasty food. I'm saying this deliberately to give you a sense of the number of hurdles we have to overcome before we can grow something that works for the farmer, the retailer, the consumer and so on, but we've done KTPs, Knowledge Transfer programmes, we have done UKUAT things, we have just agreed a research programme with the Forestry Commission to look at growing nursery-sized trees inside the vertical farm, and we also work very closely with the James Hutton Institute, with whom we are co-located. We're going to be working with people like Aberystwyth in Wales, I think the Royal Agricultural University from down south, and the Rowett Institute, so human nutrition as part of what we do up at Aberdeen. So I guess what I'm saying is for us to do what we need to do, and we're investing between £1 million a year in R&D, by the way. For us to do what we do, we have to do it within a network of relationships, because we have to triangulate our engineering with crop science and with agronomy or horticulture. That's absolutely fascinating, and clearly relationships are crucial to that development. Jack, can you maybe give your comment from what you see as that ecosystem? Is it strong enough? Is it working at pace enough to do what we require it to do? Well, thank you so much, Fiona. I call what the co-panelists have said. There's a lot happening, in fact, at Southampton. We have an on-campus accelerator where we are seeing a number of start-ups, like EMIC-wise and so on, that are focused on issues related to climate change, and they want to reduce emissions and so on, and so forth. There's a lot of things that are happening, and at the same time, I believe there's a lot more to do. There's a lot more to actually take place. One good example I can give of the university collaboration we are having is the one we started with New Forest National Park Authority here, very local to where we are. The New Forest National Park Authority is part of a consortium that is building, developing a green print for the region. There's a lot of good things happening, and the universities are proactively involved in a lot of these initiatives. When it comes to industry, business and investment, I think there's significant scope for further expansion. Having said that, as one of my families has said before, UKE is a leader in terms of the emphasis on climate change and what we are going to do about it. Having said that, I still believe that there's a lot more scope, because we don't want to have about 20 per cent of the start-ups that are focusing on that. We rather want to have 60 per cent or 70 per cent of last start-ups focusing on those issues. Thanks very much. Clearly, there is an issue about scale and peace and at what point of the start-up or the idea generation and the product development, does the relationship with financiers become critical? Therefore, I'm quite keen to find out from your experience, particularly David and Pierre, when you first approached financiers on this or what has the relationship been and when is it key? We know from some of the evidence that we've been taking in the committees about the issue about the difference between initial start-ups and the scale-up challenge and how do you work with financiers and how have we got the same appetite for investment for that scale-up that we require? David, if you can reflect on that, I'll come to Pierre. David? Sure. The way that IGS has been financed between 2013 and when I joined in 2017, there were about three or four sort of angel rounds. It was mostly the founders' friends and family and then some people he was introduced to. There was a group from France, there was an individual from the UAE but most of the other people were private individuals from the UK. I think a total of about 10 million had been raised by the time I joined, raised and spent by the way. When I came in, it was really to turn it from an R&D project into a real business and so we spent 2018 engaging with the market. This was brand new to me. I didn't know what a vertical farm was. I didn't even know what agri-tech was before I joined. It was a huge amount of homework to do but it is a hot space, the one that we're in, and we found three investors from the US. We did a series A round in the middle of 2019 that was led by S2G Seed to Growth Ventures in Chicago, who are backed by Lucas Walton, a member of the Wal-Mart family. They were co-invested by Ag Thunder from Silicon Valley, which does what it says on the tin, the Scottish Investment Bank as was, and then a second close with a New York hedge fund called Osprey and they created a VC called Osprey Ag Science in order to invest in us. We have more recently done the first close of our series B with a European family office out of Switzerland and the final close on that will be with a Scottish fund and another fund from Chicago. We will have brought in the thick end of £40 million in inward investment. That's pretty good news because it means that Scotland is a place where those people at VC and private equity level, if you have something that is world-class and if it's a hot space, people will invest in Scotland. There are a lot more targets that they could have invested in the United States. They did diligence on them, they turned them down and decided to come to Little Old Invergory. Right, so Invergory is the centre of the world on this, I'm glad to hear. However, it is interesting that real global reach in terms of putting together the financial backing aspects of that and to see Scotland as a platform with that world-class research that we can do this. That's very, very impressive. Pierre, maybe you might want to expand a bit more on your own experience with your own inventions, particularly when you had approached financiers. What were the good points of that and obviously what were the challenges, Pierre? So, in a nutshell, we developed packaging made from seaweed as an alternative to single-use plastic. We started out of Imperial College with no background in business, so it definitely took us a little bit of a learning curve to get our head around how do we fund the business. I think for the first couple of years, we didn't do a really good job at attracting equity finance. We were mainly surviving of grants. What I would say, one of the obstacles sometimes is when your category doesn't really exist. I think what you were saying is very interesting because I think that's confirming is now a really well-established area for growth and investment, but definitely seaweed packaging wasn't at that point. I think now it is becoming and so it's always going to make sure that the things that don't necessarily fit in the box today, but are going to be important in the future, like get the right level of engagement so we basically failed to raise from any kind of angel or familiar face or this is for the best of nine months of our pitching and eventually we turned to the crowd and we did the equity crowdfunding campaign with crowdfunding. It's a great option when you're in the UK. The world has caught up on equity crowdfunding, but I think the UK definitely was a main part of this day and night. We raised £850,000 in three days from 900 investors all around the world who put as little as £10 to happen, but the investors were a little bit too risk adverse and I think that was our hardest round because no one wanted to be taking the first hit and after that we found it a lot easier to start working with institutionals. We got a convertible loan from side ocean ventures, the fund of the media group that is focused on removing pollution in the oceans and then we did a seed round with VC investors, impact VC investors from Europe and the US and I were about to announce our series A with a large VC fund also abroad so I think that once you have the chance of proving yourself a bit of a track record it becomes easier and also the category became more evident as we progressed, but definitely the worry is that something that is going to be very useful in the future and that doesn't really resonate with anyone because they can't really put a name on it, it's going to still be very hard to fund and I think that that's hopefully something that is becoming less of a problem with lots of funds that are taking more risk or having innovation categories that are a little bit more loose, but it's always a risk. I think that this will come a theme about how is the finance sector particularly managing that risk and their responsibilities help us to get to where we need to get to and I wonder if I can come to you all go first looking at from that academic point of view what you're seeing in terms of that support by financiers for start-up and peers point about how do you get people to put risk into something they have no idea what it is or it's not been really deployed yet and is there a real appetite to do that or is there an understanding that the finance sector is going to have to get into this space and manage risk perhaps differently than they've done before in the climate emergency context, so I'll ask all the first and then Jack will come to you on that same point. That's actually a really good question in terms of the risk appetite of financiers and investors at different stages. I think that the first point that I would like to make is probably that investors are looking for the best possible opportunities and when you're a company seeking and we're from Zappel at Strathglide do a lot of support on investor readiness and we also have a Strathglide inspired entrepreneurship strategy which is all looking at how university can support businesses at every stage of their journey ultimately and what investors are looking for is obviously a strong innovation but they're also looking at that there is a good team behind the company people with experience in business that they could trust in doing the right things with the funding they receive so building this team and that's for example where universities can come in and tap in into our alumni networks and our international partnership to have built that team is one of the very important tasks. Moving on I think there is you know a role to play in from of building consortium of investment because investors because they do like to share risks and quite on in Scottish Enterprise for example with their investor the co-investment fund is really good too because it's the risks for private investors slightly the opportunities for them and the tax incentives that's put in EIS and SCIS relieves that exist in the UK do help fund at this early stages I mean we're certain that Strathglide see that there is a lot more of these opportunities emerging in kind of net zero sector and I think investors now are more likely for example to look at you know to building a consortium you know across the sort of Europe or across the kind of the pond in terms of funding this these businesses I think they have an appetite but certainly I think the tax incentives are really important to make it happen at the early stages so I mean there are great examples I mean we've just closed around for a meat replacement company 42 million euros has gone into enough which is basically providing fungal proteins kind of as a meat replacing prod what helped to secure it is there is a horizon funding European funding that went into it again de-risking that opportunity so I think this is what we will need to look forward to to make this work that is interesting that kind of it is nobody alone it's that relationship it's a consortia it's about spreading the the risk but also that team and having a world-class team of all the different elements behind that so Jack can I come to you and and obviously if Pierre David wants to come back on anything the power just give me an indication in the chat that you want to do that jack yes no I will know what Olga has just said there is not of that appetite but what is not becoming clear is that this is a real win-win strategy for both both investors and entrepreneurs I mean there's increasing scientific evidence that suggests that when you invest in these startups you know you're very likely to make a good return on investment but that message has to go through very clearly through the investment community I mean I've looked at the data of about 10 000 firms from across 35 OECD countries and we do see that these those firms that are taking up reining activities are actually performing better in terms of their revenue increases in terms of this I mean it's all drawing from that growing consigniousness in the broader society what the value that these firms bring and I think that message once it becomes very clear to the investment community that you know there are significant returns to be made by such investments we don't you know we won't be in a situation where our entrepreneurs have the first resort to crowdfunding or public funding and then get to that investor you know investors and investment so you know we don't have to go in those layers before you know for that funding to unfold. So it would be interesting that it will be pace to be that that will change is that model that Pierre was talking about he went through may change in your perception that's that you think that's going to be happening I think David was going to come in on that and then I've got a question from our audience that they want to put to David and I think Pierre also about business angels but David yeah sure so I would say that there the investment community is acutely aware of the opportunities that the climate crisis represent and particularly where we sit so we sit at the nexus of feed the world and tackle climate change and if you have anything to contribute to either or in our case both of those massive agendas probably the two most important things on the planet at the moment as we aim as we head towards like 10 billion of population we're going to have to grow more food in the next 30 years than we have in the previous 10 000 I'm going to say that again we have to grow more food in the next 30 years than we have in the previous 10 000 because the growth of the population is not a straight line it is exponential watch David Attenborough's personal witness statement on Netflix so whilst they are dreadful things they are they too financiers they represent opportunity because if you can solve things as big as this it is a way to make money and do some good so if you go right from individuals through to vcs they will label themselves as impact investors or ESG investors some of them will be clean tech or green tech there's about four or five major labels we had 70 approaches unsolicited because of the amount of social media stuff we've done and I would say 65 of them had some sort of clean green ESG impact type approach and even when you get to a public offering you know if you're gonna IPO your business people like Goldman Sachs and so on are mandated by the investors they're representing to find ESG things even if it is a bit of a greenwash and you know box ticking but we as entrepreneurs even if that's the case we may as well take advantage of it and take that money so there is something about the power of the consumer and their expectation and the power of the public which is also driving a lot of the what you might call green investment that's there you refer to Goldman Sachs so be you if you look at all investment companies themselves and their ESG statements so there is that combination of pressure I suppose and that may also then help in terms of that kind of access to volume and scale of capital investment but I'll come to it we've now got a question from Andrew in Edinburgh and I'll come to you Pierre first on this one and then to David how much pressure is there from business angels to get a quick return on their investment in businesses like David's and Pierre so Pierre can I come to you first yeah sure um so I think in a way we we got lucky that we ended up kind of like going for an equity crowdfunding campaign as a first financing round because it meant that we had a very fragmented cap table sorry and so it means that there wasn't a significant shareholder that could direct in and it's very often the case in early stage startups the the direction that they wanted to impose on the company and and I think that's very often the case when the founders are like first time founders and they don't necessarily have a lot of experience just yet so actually getting this equity crowdfunding campaign gave us a lot more kind of like freedom in driving the business to us the vision that we had as the founders and I think because the sole purpose of an applied to make this plastic packaging disappear we also attracted people who are like long term and patient and want to have this like this this noble kind of like purpose as part of their investment portfolio so we haven't really had like the typical pressure you can imagine from like the investors that wants to quickly sell I think especially for early stage kind of like deep tech everyone knows that like the R&D cycles are long and it's going to be really about kind of like being patient before you can really have a massive impact and also a massive return and then obviously like as we move forward with some more kind of like institutional VC funds like the environmental return is important but like the economic return is very important for their KPIs and I think we've always had like after this first round the luxury maybe of like picking who we wanted to work with I think what David said about like cold emails from like funds I can absolutely relate to that I think the investment world is super hot for investing in deep tech kind of like slightly dearest solutions so we are probably getting a like a call with an investor a week who just wants to kind of like position themselves in sustainable packaging one way or another but not all of them have great credentials not all of them have kind of like no strings attached with kind of like maybe some strategic kind of like FMCG groups and so on so we were able to pick the investors that really kind of like fit the bill for us for the long run and as a result it means that we are really on board with this idea that we're going to have to nail this technology we're going to have to kind of like industrialize it all this is going to take more time than trying to kind of like do a quick return sell on and kind of like reinvest somewhere else so there is something around obviously the quality of the world-class research that we are doing but also in terms of the investment how do you make sure you've got world-class investors other than I suppose in terms of what they're looking for in terms of return if there is choice so I don't know if David have you got any comments from on that and then I'll come back to the audience. In terms of return our valuation has gone up 10 times in two years and it's going to go up again because of the other approaches that we've had so I'm very very confident that there is a tremendous return available for investors and you know our investors are also extremely supportive of a number of things that we're doing that may not immediately you know help raise profits or raise value so they're patient they're reasonably long-term just in response to a school teacher Marjorie Ann Stewart I think it is in the chat here I've just said to her that we've just invested half a million pounds building an interactive educational facility in a pavilion on the Brumie law with a five and a half meter high vertical farm inside it and it is totally free to the public it'll be open throughout COP first to the 12th of November and it's aimed at schools groups and it's going to teach them about what's wrong with farming at the old old farming practices what's wrong with our food chains how do they relate to the UN climate targets how are they impacting climate change and what can technology like ours do to help reverse those things so it's designed to raise awareness amongst aid of school kids that there are answers for the future you know as per David Attenborough's documentary so you know that we've got total backing from our investors to do this and I think that's such an important point about this session was about you can we be optimistic and I'm getting the sense from you all that we can be optimistic and I think Marjorie's point she's from Dundee she's a teacher in technology at secondary school and she's saying that I know there's a lot of great innovative work out there but it'd be good if there was it could be communicated more widely not least to inspire that generation that next generation of inventors as well so I think that's a very good point to to not just think it is the those that have got interest in investment and innovation they want to hear about this there's a wider audience need to know about that and then we have a question from Roddy in the facing it and I suppose we're moving now a bit on to the innovation side as opposed to the investment side but the innovation side if we if we are to use less less oil does that imply that a range of products will become unavailable and are there alternatives to these projects and what effect is that likely to have on the Scottish and UK economies now I I'm sitting here in my my home in Linlithgow and it's just turned into Sunday afternoon and I've got Grainsworth just a few miles away from me but it's clearly not just about the vertical farming or the most obvious kind of product alternatives but there'll be products that people might not think about will need to change so I suppose in your surveying of the work that's happening in your universities in this area do you think that there's enough happening in that alternative to what might have been the old and we're proud from Pierre in terms of what's out of the in-usum on plastics but is there enough that you're seeing in this area and I suppose how do we know that everything's been farming to plastics to dots of different areas to know that we can have confidence and optimism that that innovation is happening so I'll come to you first Oga and then I'll come to a jag on that Oga but I think I'm looking very optimistically into the future because I think I mean UK in general is full of innovators and I think people and particularly young people you see in our students what they want to do is not just you know do a job or invent something they actually care they want to improve society for them it's really important that there is this positive element not just ultimately making money but doing greater good I think the breadth and the depth of innovation is is incredible in the UK I mean I can talk from examples of strus glide we have student projects emerging that are looking of how to increase for example the use of reusable cups how it make it easier to wash a single cup in a small device it could be used in offices etc and that's just a small incremental kind of innovation but we're also have you know we're very strongly working on electrification for example of you know airplanes we're looking on this looking at the whole systems that we have the energy system and how we can using AI and data analytics actually improves them so it's a much larger scale projects and I think is everything in between industrial biotech is an incredible sort of interesting space where we're looking at novel processes to for example to replace plastic or create you know meet replacement products as I've mentioned before so I think in terms of and that is just broadening I think one of the great things about UK ecosystem academic ecosystem and innovation ecosystem how collaborative it is because what we see is that the best innovations are emerging sort of on the on the interface between different disciplines quite often policy comes together with you know new materials and engineering we're hosting for example one ocean hub which is looking at plastic pollution in the ocean which has collaborators from 62 countries and it led from our faculty of humanities and social sciences so I'm very optimistic about the future I think we have the breadth and the depth of innovators and I think now there is a real will to come up with the solutions. Thank you very much Olga, Jack what's your view on this and obviously in reference to optimist to products that were previously obviously manufactured from oil based solutions? Thank you so much for that question in fact I used to always wonder as to why we never had electric cars in the 2010s in you know in the last century because and similarly I used to always wonder why the solar panels even today run on 20% efficiency these are questions facing broader society as to whether innovators have been interested in producing these products which are much more sustainable much more sensitive to what the emerging needs of the world are and what my feeling is my conviction is that there's a lot more optimism that we can have because the next generation of innovators that we are seeing at the universities and the broader society are trying to bridge that gap that will emerge when when we sort of get away from these whole ways of doing things so using products based on oil using products and services that are a lot more unsustainable in terms of their general appeal I think there's a lot more optimism that we can go forward with. Thank you and living in Westland as I am oil was discovered here first but of course it was shale oil but interestingly they train the service that production facility was actually electric the original going back over the years so sometimes it might be it's not just inventing the new products but it's actually how you use products that are already there and scale it up so maybe that's a thoughtful piece as well. We've got a question from Karen and I'm going to put it to to everybody but she's asking about Olga and Jagd are you seeing a generation of young people who want to be innovators to address the climate crisis? I think that Olga you've already kind of addressed some of that but I might come to Jagd first and then Pierre in terms of who you're working with and that network of young innovators that are coming through what you're seeing and the pace of what's happening there and their expectations you know in terms of this agenda but I'll come to you Jagd about what you're seeing you know in terms of young innovators in particular. As I said before there is a wide group of students and also faculty members of the universities who are pretty keen on producing those solutions and it's just not it's not happening only in the UK but I see this as a worldwide trend you haven't come from India I'm seeing innovators from India who are trying to produce these kind of sustainable solutions for the world in fact the earth shock price had eco innovators from around the world getting those prices that that were given a couple of days back so I think there is this great sense of optimism this great sense of consignativeness that we are we are perceiving in in student community across the world and that's a great reason for us to be hopeful. Thanks and Pierre what's your experience in your networks in terms of what is the next generation or you're so part of that you know young generation of innovators I'm sure but you know in terms of what you're seeing coming through are they different from you know when you first went into this and what you're seeing in terms of their expectations and what they want to do or can do here and we've got Pierre is he frozen? Am I back in here? I can hear you okay great sorry so I think what's really interesting as you were mentioning is that it's not necessarily always just kind of like inventing something brand new but it's kind of like revisiting the past and re-updating it for the kind of challenges that we're facing moving forward so I think especially like in our field we see a lot of interest in like natural materials there is so much we can do with natural materials so really exciting things that are going like away from synthetics kind of like things made in the lab and going back into understanding better nature certainly like in seaweed there's a lot going on in Scotland because there's definitely like and it used to be like a part of like the UK that was literally producing like hundreds of tons of seaweed product and that was employing hundreds of thousands of people back a few centuries ago so I think that like it's interesting to revisit some of these things I think it's really exciting that like innovators that we meet in the universities we work with or like the other kind of extortion providers we work with everyone is very clear that they want to have that purpose in what they do so it's not just kind of like the thrill of running a business or the thrill of like developing any technology but it has to make a real clear impact so I think it's really great it gives me a lot of confidence that there will be like a continuous growth of numbers of brains working on projects that really kind of like make a difference and and I think like again like back to that first question about like one of the obstacles I think that traveling exchanging like working with other people is so crucial in developing that kind of like level of inspiration of wanting to do something and I think that seeing that like for the multiple reasons that we've kind of like faced in the past kind of like few years there's been less of that and there's been more hurdles and like we're getting like it's harder for us to get interns from Europe because you also need like to get all of the visas I think that's a huge kind of like obstacle for getting this kind of like next wave of people who want to do something kind of like good to actually get exposed to interesting things so I think that we would benefit so much from lifting some of those kind of like burdens and just making it easier for everyone to go where they want to get inspired. Okay I'll come to Jack and then I'll come to James to his indicators that interest Jack. Yes and in fact I was working with one organisation in the US called Turn in Green that brings around students from across the world to collaborate on these projects and then create impact so I mean there is this um um increasing sense of responsibility that I you know I see the students carrying all over the world and that's something that I'll come back and emphasise again that you know we need to support we need to create an ecosystem that ensures that now we're not only thinking at the level of entrepreneurs who are these people making a transition into starting those businesses but we're also thinking about students and future entrepreneurs, nascent entrepreneurs and seeing how we can enable those nascent entrepreneurs to become entrepreneurs so that those ideas become viable products and services that the broader society can benefit from but there is this emerging um sort of a wave that is that is not perceived very obviously but it is there that is that that's happening right in the wrong place. So I'll bring in David and I saw Olga nodding so I might bring in after David Olga so David first. Yeah I am one way in which I am optimistic is you know so my daughter turned 20 today she's studying oceanography in marine biology she is absolutely passionate I mean she would marry David Attenborough if that were possible but he's absolutely passionate about this whole thing and increasingly the people she hangs out with her friends and so on are equally passionate about this whole thing and actually to some extent they put my generation the shame I don't think they blame us I mean I know she loves her dad but they know that it was our generation that's caused an awful lot of these problems and they I think they want to bring us with them there's a massive growth in plant-based food and things that's a huge sector adjacent to ours there's a real drive to avoid bad packaging and so on and so on and I think it's this next generation that is really going to lead if we give them a chance I've put into the chat an amazing film called breaking boundaries it's by a Swedish professor I would urge you to look at it and he's identified the seven or eight major challenges we've got and they do a kind of traffic light thing and if you go from green to amber you can go back to green but if you go from amber to red that's it so I would really urge you to watch this but we take saltire scholars in every year into our business so these are third year undergrad students and we also have a you know we've gone from 25 to 140 people during lockdown the majority of those people are probably at under 35 and they and our saltire scholars we had 20 of them this year are absolutely passionate about what IGS is contributing to so the sense of purpose is there and I think that drive if we can support it and feed it you know it's those people that are going to get us out of the hole we've dug for ourselves. That's David and can you wish your daughter happy birthday from all of us and best wishes for her study. Elgar what's your reflections on this? I think where I want to go is for example the need of all of us in particular I mean we I do have like David a big hopes for younger generation is be in a sense more entrepreneurial embrace it into entrepreneurial mindset it's not just about starting a business like David and Pierre did here but in our kind of everyday life or an everyday job whether people work for a third sector or for a government or for a university or for a small business to look at potential for innovation and sometimes it's going to be very small and incremental type of innovation to make the practices everyday life more sustainable so I think that's something where our particular educational institutions and by then I don't mean just universities but starting very it's sort of at the very early stage from even from primary school I know how my six-year-old daughter loved when she did a little enterprise project you know of making lemonade and then trying to sell it but you know harvesting their energy and building that entrepreneurial mindset I think can bring us a solution and the last point I will say is that innovation is not incremental it's exponential and I think that's what we'll see we now at this maybe early stage and we're not noticing it but already with the amount of renewable energy that is being used you know it's doubles every almost every couple of years so I think that's where again another point for optimism that's a very interesting perspective and we have a question from Anna in Inverness and I will come to you David first is Scotland a good place to be an innovator yeah here we are absolutely but it's all about your mindset you know we we've just decided to go big we've decided that the fact that we are in Scotland really has got nothing to do with anything from a global perception point of view Scotland is a great name it's got a good brand I think we are respected as a nation throughout the world I think we have largely done more good than bad I you know as well as being known for whisky and salmon I think people do respect the Scottish enlightenment all the innovation that's happened over the years and we definitely punch above our weight but it's it's all up here you have got to be ambitious you know we have set ourselves a target of putting vertical farms on six continents within three years we're already on four we have reached out to world leaders to come and see what we're doing at COP26 and the response has been incredible we are continuously punching ridiculously above our weight the article the the one I've put here the economist blood sweat and dreams that's been watched by almost half a billion people you know it is absolutely amazing and so I think that what we should not do is worry about being Scottish I think flip that on its head let's be incredibly proud but let's go out and be really great neighbours let's not go and colonise let's be friends to the rest of the world and I think if you have ambition and that positive attitude then I think the sky's the limit and that's really inspiring and clearly I think we can do this and it's that sense of ambition that is hugely important so Pierre what do you think about Scotland as a place to do innovation are you up for it? I mean like the whole reason that I came to the UK is that I thought that there was something really interesting happening and I felt doing it in the UK rather than in my home country in France so I think it shows that like you can really like take your kind of like your background and you can make whatever you want to happen wherever you want to go I think for us we like we see a lot of advantages in being in being in the UK and like there's tons of you know like good reasons to kind of like stay here there's also like some challenges but as they were saying it's like a mindset there's always going to be challenges and you have to kind of like you have to power through in particular because we use a lot of seaweed I think like Scotland is definitely a hotspot and sadly the last kind of like seaweed extract kind of like factories closed a couple of decades ago but I'm really hopeful that in the next kind of a few are going to open there's definitely a lot of seaweed farms that are popping up all around the coast so as far as like the seaweed industry Scotland is definitely a hotspot. Okay now we've got a question from Roddy and what pragmatic outcomes do you hope will result from COP26 which I'm sure everybody's asking everybody at this point because we're obviously only got a few days to go Olga can I come to you first and then to Jack Olga I think it's it's a really good question I think it's a million dollar question if I have to be honest I think I do hope that there will be some practical agreements coming in together that could be implemented and I think it's that actually that they I don't think it's just about you know what they agree but I think that they're getting an agreement that everyone around the table I think that is crucial because this is one of these challenges that no one country can solve on its own it needs to be a bind across the world leaders and I think that's where the main challenges are I think there is a lot of hope going into there at the same time I think there is this worry that whether you know actually the leaders have the chance to put maybe their specific countries interests slightly to the side and think about the global good so that's for me would be the probably the biggest thing and then I think there is there is there a lot of desire to do good thing we just never need a bit of an agreement of how we're going to go about it okay Jack I think there'll be significantly positive outcomes coming out of COP26 and for reasons that Olga just mentioned you know they're all coming together that itself is quite an accomplishment on this on this note I'm fairly confident that something tangible and something positive will come out of it but I don't know what that will be okay well we're we're coming to a close is another question coming in now I just wonder and I'm going to give you an opportunity all to reflect on one area we haven't touched on of course this is the Parliament festival politics and what is the role of government and regulation policy but I think it's quickly from everything you said there's a combination of everything from the innovation from the public from the investors that whole and it was described as the ecosystem but how do you make sure that that's in the strongest place it can be and how do you make sure Scotland is in the strongest place to do that but one of the final questions and when I come to you for your final sort of minute of remarks each and David from Glasgow is challenging us to as panellists to tell us about three great innovation they know about and the public might see in the next five years so I think there's an appetite here to know what we don't know or what might be coming down the track you may or may not know that or you could punt and take a guess but any of that in terms of your reflections of of what you've heard in terms of of that I think I'll start with you drag and then I'll move to Pierre so Jack first on this final round up of your final comment yes I think there is a lot of scope for public policy to come into picture here in terms of coding green or coconut innovators there are several things that can be done and there's a need for thinking through the process so that the the the entire agenda is supported as one example very quickly there could be a platform where all these products and services are showcased worldwide the new markets open up for the excellent ideas that are being supported in the UK that are being you know that are transforming into entrepreneurial ventures and so on and so forth it's all about getting the message out and that's something we should put a focus on and that's interesting that's what Margaret from overest I think was suggesting as well. Pierre what's your final comment so on that previous kind of like question about what's coming up I think it's super saying that there's a bunch of stuff that we don't even kind of like know about that are coming like in the pipeline and I think that's that's what I love about like the innovation kind of like scene is that like you always get surprised at what people come up with I think it's like really refreshing that there is a like no shortage of interest in ideas and in a way I think entrepreneurs are definitely like doing their best to rise to the the challenge that we face I think we talked about like like the financiers that there's definitely a lot of like money available to give a shot to these to these ideas and and I think like when it comes to kind of like governments and politics there's definitely kind of like like maybe a lot of resentments from having seen a lot of kind of like time spent on not really moving fast I think overall with COP there's been a lot of kind of like previous like opportunities for getting some strong commitments that haven't really happened so I think like the expectations are definitely like quite low that something significant is going to come out of it but if you look at it the other way there's a massive opportunity for politicians and kind of like world leaders to re-inspire all of their people and show that they can like really do some great stuff together because right now people have like little faith that there's going to be some sort of kind of like collaboration the same way they see collaboration on their day-to-day life and I think that that's like that's something that could change very rapidly and I really hope that like we get kind of like proven wrong and that these things happen but I think yeah massive opportunity when expectations are quite low. But thanks Pierre and I think we're all trying to you hope that the governance come good I think is to say briefly and we've only got about a minute each for Algan Davis so your final reflections Olga and then I'll come to David, Olga. Okay I'll be very quick I think what I'm looking for is the pandemic demonstrated how quickly we can move if there is a right regulatory environment and the right amount of investment to bring completely new products to the market you know we're talking about vaccines and all the tests etc. I'm looking and I'm hoping that that's what's going to happen that with the right regulatory and amount and the investment we actually can accelerate our innovation forward next zero and in particular I think carbon capture and storage will be a massive area going forward so and I'll stop there. All right move on to David. I worry a great deal about Australia selling coal to China and India refusing to stop using coal and Brazil's attitude and so on if we want to flip that there is something the Scottish government maybe the UK government can do vertical farming is cleaner than organic farming we do not burn diesel diesel tractors still get a tax break on what they call the red diesel with the dye in it that is not going away anytime soon so why don't we give vertical farmers that's not us that's our customers a tax break on renewable energy and take the tariff the tax piece off that tariff because we are much cleaner than organic we're not burning any fossil fuels any carbon whatsoever and I think it's inequitable that people who are are getting a tax break and our farmers are not so my plea would be please can we change that and give reduced tax renewable energy people using our vertical farms. Thanks David and I hope that a lot of people come and see your exemplar vertical farming that you were talking about earlier on. I'm afraid that we're going to have to end there and I want to thank all of you for joining us today making such a big contribution and really interesting fascinating and inspiring and so thank you to our panel and we've brought to you in partnership with the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I'd like to thank our panel Dr Olga Kosova, Pierre Pazdier, David Parker and Dr Vaginda Pau and Tambada for taking giving up your time to be with us on this day so I just want to remind you that later on today at the festival politics we have a fascinating discussion about the role, culture and art plays in our health and wellbeing that's at two o'clock and then a panel about how to make our cities resilient in the face of climate change and finally there's a panel later on in prioritising mental health so I do hope that you can join these discussions and thank you to our panel and best wishes for all your endeavours and I think that you have set out a case for optimism. Thank you.