THEME 2: ENHANCING INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS AND CAPTURING OVERSEAS INVESTMENT
Main issues
1. Science and research play a key role in supporting the Executive's International Strategy, which is aimed at encouraging Scotland's links with highly important economies such as China, Germany and the US. Building such links and promoting our international profile will help Scotland capture new investment from overseas that is likely to create highly skilled jobs with high value goods and services; it also spreads far wider into other areas of the economy, such as tourism and culture.
2. Much activity and resources are already devoted to this area. Some of this is linked to the UK effort - for example through Whitehall schemes to attract postgraduates from China. Other initiatives are principally Scotland-based - for instance SDI's Global Connections strategy; the Royal Society of Edinburgh's exchange scheme for researchers, and their publication Science Scotland which promotes Scottish Science in the UK and abroad.
3. We also need to continue to attract top international researchers; our ability to do this is an indicator of the competitiveness of the Scottish science research base, and of course such wins also in themselves help us to raise the profile of Scotland.
4. Views are sought in this consultation on what else can and should be done to build Scotland's links with the global science community and to capture new investment.
Commitments and actions from the Progress Report on the science strategy
5. In responding to this consultation it would be helpful to have views on the following proposed aspirations and actions:
Long term aspirations
- Continue to promote Scotland as a "science nation": a world-class location for science and research and development, with productive international education and research links in both existing and new markets
Short to medium term action points
We will:
- Promote innovation, science and research links with important economies particularly in the Far East, USA and Germany, and if feasible, develop measures of international research collaboration in order to track progress.
- Further develop mechanisms to attract and retain world class researchers