The development body said it had decided to bring the six-year-old technology development initiative under its direct control to boost efforts to ensure that Scotland makes the most of its world-class knowledge base. One move it might make toencourage the University participation could be a relaxation on the contentious issue of insisting that IP is owned outright by ITIS and not by the Universities (Right: Jack Perry, CEO Scottish Enterprise. Courtesy: www.theherald.co.uk. Picture: Colin Mearns)

Members of the board of the holding company for the three ITIs, set up to focus on technology, media and energy, have been informed of the decision and Macpherson, deciding to step down as chairman at the end of January will not receive any compensation.

The Scottish Enterprise spokesman denied suggestions that the decision to integrate the ITIs within the agency's wider research, commercialisation and innovation operations represented an about-turn by SE or an admission that the programme had failed.

"They have had really great successes. They have committed £134m across 25 research programmes and 11 of these are already completed, generating 12 licensing deals and 32 patents being filed."

Thanks to Scottish Government reforms, SE has now a clear focus on priority industries. The remit for the kind of innovation and commercialisation work fostered by the ITIS has become a core part of what SE is doing. "We need to look at ways to align their activity with what we are doing and look at ways of working together to get intellectual property down to the companies that we are working with," the spokesman said.

Macpherson (left) will work with a transition team that finalises plans for how the ITIs are incorporated within SE. Before completion of that process, SE said it could not give an estimate of expected cost savings. There will be no compulsory redundancies at ITIS, which employs 80 staff in total.

Launched in 2002, the ITIS were billed as an innovative response to the perennial problem of how to make sure that Scotland anticipated changes in key markets. Then SE CEO, Robert Crawford, said: 'If we get this right, it will be one of the most important things not only that Scottish Enterprise has ever done, but also that Scotland has ever done."

The ITIS were given a £450m, 10-year budget and tasked with identifying  areas of research Scotland could turn to commercial advantage. Its latest year income was £112,000 from exploiting research outcomes. Putting the effort under a stand-alone programme was expected to result in a sharper focus on key areas and effective delivery.The economic environments changes all that.

Sources:http://www.theherald.co.uk/
http://www.computescotland.com//iti-scotland-raises-the-red-flag-and-admits-budgets-written-in-water-1846.php
http://computescotland.com//iti-innovation-hub-in-call-for-synthetic-biology-1110.php
Web:http://www.itiscotland.com/