A Scottish company co-founded by one of the scientists behind the creation of Dolly the Sheep has collapsed into liquidation. All jobs have been lost. I want you to sit with that sentence for a moment, because it tells you something important about how Scotland treats its scientific heritage.
From World First to Liquidation
In 1996, scientists at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh achieved something that changed biology forever. They cloned a mammal from an adult cell. Dolly became the most famous sheep in history, and Scotland became synonymous with cutting edge life sciences research. The work that followed, the spin out companies, the research partnerships, the commercial applications, was supposed to be the dividend.
And now one of those companies is gone. Not acquired. Not merged. Gone. Liquidated. Every job lost.
The Pattern We Keep Ignoring
This is not an isolated case. Scotland has a habit of producing world class science and then failing to build lasting commercial enterprises around it. We generate the ideas, publish the papers, win the grants, and then watch as the commercial value migrates south or overseas. The universities thrive. The spin outs struggle. The cycle continues.
The reasons are familiar to anyone who has spent time in Scotland’s innovation ecosystem. Venture capital is scarce compared to London or Cambridge. The talent pipeline is thin at the commercial end. And there is a cultural reluctance to talk about money in the same breath as science, as though profit somehow diminishes discovery.
What This Loss Actually Means
Every job lost in a science company represents years of specialist training and experience that cannot be easily replaced. These are not positions that can be filled by retraining. When a life sciences firm collapses, the knowledge walks out the door and often out of the country.
Scotland’s political class loves to talk about the knowledge economy. They love ribbon cutting at new research centres and announcing innovation funds. But the hard work, the patient capital, the regulatory support, the commercial mentorship, that is where the system falls apart.
Dolly the Sheep put Scotland on the map. The collapse of this company is a reminder that being first means nothing if you cannot sustain what follows.