THE walls and shelves in Crawford Gillies' office are dotted with photographs of him surrounded by former and recent colleagues and associates, worldwide partner meetings, golf days, that sort of thing, suggesting someone who likes to be at the heart of the action and foster a team spirit.
After spending almost all his career at the management consultancy Bain & Co, his current portfolio includes the chairmanship of Scottish Enterprise, where a similar esprit de corps may help raise the level of expectation.
He's relishing the task
of trying to achieve something that has eluded his predecessors: improving the Scottish economy's dismal growth rate. It is four months since he succeeded Sir John Ward and he's aware that none who has gone before him has managed to bridge the £600m productivity gap with the rest of the UK. "There is no silver bullet," he admits. "If there was, then someone would have fired it a long time ago."
Gillies concedes that SE cannot transform the economy without help, that setting goals of that kind would be too ambitious and unrealistic. The solution, he believes, lies in a multi-agency approach. "Scottish Enterprise cannot do it by itself. We need to work with others to create a higher number of competitive businesses," he says.
It is not an abdication of responsibility, but an admission that creating the right conditions for businesses to grow depends on the local authorities, now in control of the Business Gateway advice service, and others including the environmental and transport organisations.
But once again, the issue of SE's role and continued usefulness has to be addressed. Has it outlived its purpose and become just another quango that would not be missed if it was wound up?
"Over the last four months I have been kicking a few tyres as a sceptical taxpayer, but I don't go into this believing the public sector has all the answers or that it cannot make a difference," he says. "We have a big role to play with ambitious companies that have the potential to grow into companies of scale."
He's also keen on commercialisation, turning good ideas into thriving enterprises. But haven't we heard all this before? After all, Crawford Beveridge, a former chief executive, launched a commercialisation strategy back in the 1990s. His successor Robert Crawford went one step further with the Intermediary Technology Institutes. Jack Perry, encouraged by the reforming approach of John Ward, invested in the Edinburgh bioquarter and the translational medicine project, a collaboration between SE, four Scottish universities, the NHS and US pharmaceuticals firm Wyeth.
Ward talked about how Scotland was underplaying its assets, something he had identified back in the Seventies. Gillies was saying the same thing last week when he spoke about a delegation of American businessmen who described Scotland as an untapped resource in software and other technology. "There is a fantastic opportunity if we can improve our ability to translate those outstanding resources into economic benefits," he declared. "Yes, we have been talking about it for decades. But we need to keep working at it, and we need to change our approach."
Ah, a change of approach. But how?
"In the past, maybe we've been disjointed. We have not put enough focus on the human aspect of building great companies. The technology is not enough, you need to bring it together with the right people. We need to move away from 'letting a hundred flowers bloom' and get behind the real winners, the enterprise champions."
It is difficult to challenge this notion, except that we've also heard all this before. The high-growth unit at SE has focused for years on exactly these companies and is regarded as one of the agency's biggest successes. Bringing teams of managers in to take over the technology created by academics is a well-worn path taken by venture capitalists and other investors in early-stage companies.
Arguably, attempts to marry academia and business have been a bit of a problem. The ITIs, criticised for being an expensive gamble, have been taken back under the wing of SE after a review that revealed they were not exactly churning out companies on the required scale.
"I don't believe they failed," says Gillies, clasping his hands as if in prayer. "But the real test of such projects is over several years. Integrating the ITIs alongside other SE programmes has to be right. They have done some of the initiating and now we need to bring in the commercialisation earlier in the process."
He points to prosthetics firm Touch Bionics at Livingston, which he chairs, as an example of a company that is a model of what can be achieved. "We have married excellent technology with a management team that is second to none. We need to do more of that sort of thing."
Now 53, Gillies is throwing himself into the SE role, believing that his experience as a consultant can be brought to bear on the challenges it faces. He was European managing director for Bain & Co, working across 10 countries, has also worked in America, and held a number of other senior positions, including a spell as chairman of the CBI in London.
He admits he was among that generation of young Scots who left the country after graduating and is now trying to reverse that process. Though working away all that time, he has been on the fringes of SE for some time, helping it set up the Saltire Foundation and becoming one of its army of Global Scots who offer international advice and networking opportunities to Scottish firms.
On getting the SE job he hosted a dinner for fellow Global Scots in London and admits that he has been energised to do something for Scotland since returning home earlier this decade, even though he continued to commute between Edinburgh and Europe.
"I have believed passionately in what SE has been trying to do so I was delighted when they selected me for the job." He was not surprised when Jack Perry announced his resignation, aware that he had indicated that four to six years in the chief executive's role would be enough. He knew therefore that one of his first jobs would be to find Perry's successor, a process he has handed to the Edinburgh headhunter Finlayson Wagner Black. Adverts are appearing this weekend and the search will be worldwide, but it could be another 12 months before the new man or woman is in place.
While Perry took some flak for the length of time it took to restructure the organisation, his sympathisers and supporters say that the political in-fighting and dithering that goes with the territory hardly helped. Gillies believes Perry did a "fantastic job" and that, as far as he's concerned, the restructuring is complete. That's not to say there won't be further tinkering, as Gillies is equally committed to delivering value for the taxpayer.
"We have now got clarity and agreement on what the role of SE should be. I don't see any need for further restructuring, though there will be things we can do better. Think instead of SE being a slot machine in which politicians can put in a pound and expect to get £5 back. We have to think of areas in which we can get a better return. Does that mean spending more on commercialisation? More on infrastructure?"
Gillies says that if he sees or hears of something that is detrimental to what he and SE are trying to achieve he'll not shy away from speaking out. "I am not seeing this as an easy number. I am as energetic, driven and ambitious as I have ever been. I have never worked in Scotland, but I'm ready to apply what I know and tell it as I see it."
