Action Packed

Measuring Success

With commitment and the right investment, the digital media industries in Scotland can achieve long-term, sustainable growth and make a significantly increased contribution to the Scottish economy. 


Our target is to double the value of sector revenues to £6.3bn by 2012. In developing this target, we have considered the likely growth of the sector if we do nothing – a ‘base case scenario’.  Recent work by NESTA  estimates that the creative industries (of which digital media is a subset) will grow by an average of 4% per annum to £85bn by 2013, taking account of the current recession.


We know that Scotland accounts for approximately 7% of the UK creative industries, and that digital media accounts for approximately 65% of the Scottish creative industries . On this basis, the base case scenario is for the Scottish digital media sector to be worth approximately £3.8bn by 2012.


To achieve our target of doubling sector revenues to £6.3bn by 2012, we need to drive up growth rates in the sector to 15% from 2008 to 2010 and then again to 20% for 2011-2012. This is the ‘intervention case scenario’ shown below.

 

 
In practice, this means is that the actions we take must support the creation of an additional £2.47bn in revenues for the sector between now and 2012.
This is a deliberately ambitious target, but one that we believe is achievable if the actions contained here are realised. 


Breaking down this target requires further work, and the Digital Media Advisory Group  will continue to develop appropriate measures to track the progress of the strategy.We expect that these will include more specific targets relating to:

 

  • Increasing the number of companies
  • Increasing the number of companies of scale
  • Moving companies up the value chain
  • Increasing employment
  • Growing our reputation