Outsource Magazine

Scottish Development International (SDI) is a joint venture between the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. SDI works to attract inward investment and knowledge to Scotland in order to help the economy grow. SDI also works to help Scottish companies do more business overseas and to promote Scotland as a good place to live, work and do business.

SDI provides a full range of services for companies seeking to exploit Scotland’s key strengths in knowledge, high-level skills, technology and innovation. 

What sets Scotland apart, is the close and productive collaboration it encourages between its centres of government, its business innovators, its finance leaders, its institutions of higher learning and the inward investors it welcomes.

As a key player within this collaborative environment, SDI’s objective is to benefit the Scottish economy both by encouraging inward investment into Scotland and by helping Scottish-based companies to develop trade activities outwith Scotland. 

SDI has 23 offices worldwide, with 260 staff.  Working across the priority areas of Financial Services, Life Science, Food & Drink, Tourism, Energy, Electronics Markets and Education, it aims to:

Attract direct foreign investment, concentrating on research, design and development projects with high knowledge content;

Enhance the internationalisation capabilities of companies through the international strategy development;

Create partnership investments between Scottish and foreign companies and organisations to open new channels to markets, investments, technologies and products;

Increase trade growth by encouraging the expansion of Scotland's portfolio for first-class exported goods and services to new markets;

Help strike licensing deals between Scottish and overseas companies and universities.