Who we work with

We help the Scottish Government deliver on its Economic Strategy for Scotland, which aims to create a more productive, cohesive and fairer society – nurturing Scottish businesses so they can flourish, compete and prosper in international markets.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) is a Scottish Government agency that promotes the economic development of the Highland and Islands region. We work closely with HIE to deliver a range of support services to local businesses.

South of Scotland Enterprise (SoSE) is an economic development agency committed to driving inclusive growth and competitiveness and tackling inequality within the region and Scotland as a whole.

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) is responsible for the delivery of careers, skills and training services in Scotland. We work with SDS to support businesses in identifying and addressing any skills and training gaps.

VisitScotland is Scotland's national tourist board. We work with together to promote Scotland as a place to live, work and study.

Screen Scotland is responsible for increased funding and support for film and television production.

We work closely with Screen Scotland, alongside our partners at HIE, SDS and the Scottish Funding Council, with funding from the Scottish Government and the National Lottery.

Scottish Development International is our international arm and Scotland’s trade and inward investment agency. With more than 30 global offices, we work together to support Scottish companies to grow their exports in international markets.

The Department for Business & Trade (formerly Department for International Trade) supports businesses to invest, grow and export. It offers a range of courses, training and guidance for UK exporters through the Great.gov.uk service.

The Institute of Export and International Trade is the professional membership body that represents and supports the interests of everyone involved in importing, exporting and international trade. 

Launched in 2020, the Scottish National Investment Bank is a development bank for Scotland, providing 'patient capital', long-term investment for businesses and projects through Scotland. We focus on the early stage growth capital area and work with the bank to support these projects.

Scottish Enterprise is a partner in Interreg Europe RaiSE. This project brings together six proactive regions and one advisory partner to address the common challenge of enhancing the competitiveness of social enterprises and to help fulfil the objectives of the European Commission’s Social Business Initiative.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) is the national strategic body responsible for funding activities in Scotland's higher education institutions. We work with the SFC at a strategic level to help make Scotland the best place in the world to educate, research and innovate.

Local councils take the lead role in delivering Business Gateway support to start-ups and growing businesses. We partner with Business Gateway across a range of services to take potential high-growth businesses to the next level.

Co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme, User-Factor was a three-year project that aimed to strengthen innovation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by supporting them to use design as a tool for user-driven innovation. We were one of eight European partners.

Scotland is one of 10 regions across eight countries that have come together to develop new approaches to encourage and deliver interregional collaboration across structural fund policy instruments through the S34Growth project.

Northern Connections was a project funded by the EU Interreg North Sea Region Programme that ran from 2014 - 2022. It had 21 partners across the North Sea area, including organisations that represented government, research and industry bodies in Scotland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Sweden.

While it was running, we were a partner in the Co-Innovate project. This project was designed to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro-businesses to achieve success through innovation.

We were a partner in this three-year initiative which ran from 2019 - 2022. The project was a cross-sectoral collaborative network that aimed to accelerate the growth of the ocean energy sector and its supply chains across the partner regions.