IoD Scotland Autumn 2021

Leadership Interview: Professor Mark Logan
Don’t let us fall
into the tragedy
of inaction
Renowned tech entrepreneur Professor Mark Logan talks to IoD Scotland’s
Rob Beswick about Scotland’s digital future, the challenge of climate
change and why we’re trapped in a modern day ‘tragedy of the commons’
By nature, you would suspect Professor
Mark Logan is something of an optimist.
Certainly, when pressed on the
possibilities open to Scotland’s
flourishing digital tech sector, his vision
is one that could have Silicon Valley’s
giants nervously glancing over their
collective shoulders as he maps out a
route that could see Scotland boast ‘a
hundred Skyscanners’.
But turn the conversation to the fight
against climate change, and the tone is
more pessimistic.
It’s easy to see why. The biggest
smoking gun of a generation was fired
in August with the release of the IPCC
report on climate change, and as Mark
points out, “the story was gone from the
main news channels within 48 hours.”
“We’ve just had the biggest wake-up
call we’ve ever had on a single issue and
within two days the media spotlight had
moved on, like it was just one more story
to think about, discuss and gloss over.
We’ve got to wake up to the catastrophe
we’re facing.”
That wasn’t the only thing that worried
him, either: “The lack of a coherent and
proportionate response from governments
around the world is terrifying. We are at
war with our own path dependence; with
our vested interests, our sunk costs and
our failure to comprehend exponential
change.”
Our common response, he says, is
instead to turn to technology, looking for
easy salvation. “Technology certainly
contains the seeds of the solution, but
right now the tech industry is even a net
accelerator of carbon consumption.
We’re using new technologies to bring
oil fields that were not previously viable
into use; we celebrate blockchain, but its
first major application, bitcoin, uses
more electricity than an average
European country. And for what?
Financial speculation.”
If the tech sector is going to help
Scotland to ‘net zero’, however, you can
bet Mark will play a key role. The former
Chief Operating Officer of Skyscanner
and before that VP of engineering at
Atlantech, a Scottish software business
sold to Cisco for $180m in 2000, and a
founding member of big data start-up
Sumerian, Mark is an expert in scaling
digital businesses. His independent
review of the Scottish tech ecosystem
led to him being asked by the Scottish
Government to head a post-pandemic
tech-led recovery, with a goal of
establishing Scotland as a world-class
technology hub.
And just in case he didn’t have enough
on his plate, he is also the Professor of
Computing Science at the University of
Glasgow and involved in a number of
other digital operations.
A busy man, but with a track record of
building world-class digital enterprises in
a country that hitherto was not seen as a
global player, it’s easy to see why he is in
such demand.
It certainly kept him busy during the
past 18 months as the world got to grips
with Covid-19. “I had a lot of work to do
so the first wave of the pandemic I dealt
with fairly well. The second wave was
different; like many people I felt very
uncomfortable over the winter lockdown.
I realised I was more of a social animal
than I had previously realised!”
While health-wise the pandemic left
him largely untouched, on the business
side he saw the impact of lockdowns at
close quarters. “To take one example, I
do a lot of work with start-ups and many
struggled severely, and are still
struggling. They’ve lost markets through
no fault of their own and it was heartbreaking;
a really painful experience.”
Part of the challenge was the
uncertainty. “I like to know the path I’m
following and my direction of travel. We
didn’t have that in the past 18 months as
we were never sure what would happen
next, and when it would all end.”
What the pandemic did do was remind
Mark of how vulnerable we are as a
society, and here he sees strong parallels
with climate change. “Covid-19 showed
us how disasters can develop
exponentially. What looked to many like
a smallish, localised issue became a
global catastrophe in a matter of weeks.
That’s what happens when the exponentials
kick in. Covid-19 is a harbinger of what is
happening with climate change; once the
balance is tipped against us, we will be
overwhelmed by the consequences. It’s
later than we think.”
The pandemic brought with it huge
changes in how businesses operated,
with the growth of working from home.
Many were surprised by how well the
change went, but it was second nature to
Mark. “Perhaps people didn’t realise they
had everything they needed to keep the
wheels turning; the equipment and skills
for home working were well-established.
The only thing we had to do was break
people’s ingrained habits and beliefs
– that it was essential to commute to an
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Autumn 2021