Investment of £231m by Scottish Enterprise has returned £600,000 a FOI request has revealed. 

The Scottish Herald report:

THE scale of the failure of Scottish Enterprise’s initiative to create billion-pound companies from Scottish research can be exposed for the first time: The £231 million investment over 10 years has returned barely £600,000.

When the Intermediary Technology Institutes (ITIs) were launched by then Scottish Enterprise (SE) chief executive Robert Crawford in December 2002, he said that if they succeeded they would be “one of the most important things- that Scotland has ever done”.

The then First Minister Jack McConnell also hailed the initiative, saying: “Scotland’s technology institutes will have a crucial role in making the giant leap to more world-beating companies and high-quality jobs.”

You can read the full story here. 

Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.