³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

There are more changes afoot at Scottish Enterprise, the Holyrood government's development agency covering the bits that aren't the Highlands and Islands.

After some sweeping changes of the way it operates and what it does, it is publishing a new business plan, not least to show that the agency is doing something helpful to tackle these somewhat changed economic circumstances.

This is in return for the £250 million of Scottish Government cash, which SE likes to remind us is less than 1% of the total Holyrood budget.

The focus has moved from general support for companies throughout its region to specific support for the 2000 or so companies with the best growth potential.

That tends not to include those struggling and failing in the recession.

Those being made redundant have to go to another quango, Skills Development Scotland, to get help in finding new work, while councils have taken on responsibility for local economic development, some of them more credibly than others.

As part of SE's new business plan, there is a sharp cut in what was, for most of this decade, the Big Idea, of supporting emerging technologies to get from research to development stage and prepare them for market.

This plan was put into the Intermediate Technology Institutes, which were set up to handle innovation in energy, techmedia and life sciences.

Between setting up in 2003 and the latest report, for 2007-08, these had launched 25 programmes, completed 11 of them, filed 133 patents and registered only 12 commercial licensing deals.

All this for £135 million.

Perhaps the biggest thing about this big idea was its budget. Or perhaps innovation requires more patience.

Scottish Enterprise's chief executive Jack Perry dispensed with the patient approach and brought the I.T.I.s in-house in January, aiming at least to strip out some top heavy administrative costs and end the embarrassing struggle they faced to find people of ability who can lead innovation and are not promptly lured away to much better-paying jobs elsewhere.

This strategy has led to a sharp reduction, within the new business plan, in the amount of funding for what they like to call Intellectual Property generation.

The emphasis now is to take what they have, and what they can get, making it available as open source resource, and to do better at commercialisation - always the weak point of Scotland's impressive science and technology base.

One of the more interesting areas it is looking closely at in the renewable energy sector is in offshore grid technologies.

Watch this space, even if you have to go sub-sea to do so.

The other striking change for Scottish Enterprise is in its capital spend. It has been allowed to bring forward spending on its pet projects, as part of the fiscal stimulus package.

But that has left a significant gap in following years.

The current year is seeing business infrastructure spend of £65 million.

But next year's is only £10m, and the year after it rises to £28m.

There were some hopes that yesterday's Budget at Westminster might find new money to backfill the capital funding gap.

On the contrary, the public sector capital squeeze looks particularly harsh.

The capital acceleration should help bring forward upgrading of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow, the Fife Energy Park, based in Methil, Edinburgh BioQuarter, centred on the new Royal Infirmary, and Renfrewshire's advanced engineeringing research centre.

But even if SE says it remains committed, the sharp cut in capital spend looks like less good news for, for instance, Ravenscraig's redevelopment, where it proving hard to co-ordinate commitment from troubled development companies.

And with the same general capital picture emerging out of Alistair Darling's budget, what about the other pet projects, in transport for instance, that now look decades away?

If the Forth replacement crossing has to go ahead, don't count on much else for a while, least of all a high-speed rail link between Scotland and London.

The SE business plan is notably vague on its creative industries plans, but much more detailed on tourism.

It gives priority to boosting market opportunities "such as golf, food, mountain biking and sailing", with work under way to develop an "adventure sports strategy".

It also shows that seven honey pots have been chosen as priorities for tourism, in association with industry representatives; Glasgow, Edinburgh, rural Perthshire, Royal Deeside, St Andrews, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park and Cairngorm National Park.

It may be that Highlands and Islands Enterprise is taking responsibility for tourism in Drumnadrochit, etc. But so much for Burns Country in this Year of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖcoming.