The body is a successor in part to the wide-ranging Scottish Development Agency which was established in 1975. The first Chairman of the SDA was
Sir William Gray former
Lord Provost of
Glasgow. and the first Chief Executive was Dr, later Sir Lewis Robertson. The first year of its operation was 1977/78 with its functions described here in its first Annual Report 1978. Scottish Enterprise was created on 1 April 1991 under the Enterprise and New Towns (Scotland) Act 1990. That act dissolved the Scottish Development Agency (SDA), created in 1975 and the Highlands and Islands Development Board forming Scottish Enterprise alongside
Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Scottish Enterprise was created with a structure of Local Enterprise Companies (LECs). Initially these were Limited Companies with boards led by local businesspeople, but from 2000 they became wholly owned subsidiaries of Scottish Enterprise and were subsequently wound up. International trade and investment arm
Scottish Development International was established in 2001 by merging the export promotion agency, Scottish Trade International (STI; 1991–2001) and the foreign direct investment and inward investment agency, Locate in Scotland (LiS; 1981–2001). It is jointly operated by Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise. On 1 April 2008, the skills function of Scottish Enterprise moved out of the organisation to the newly formed
Skills Development Scotland.
Lena Wilson became the Chief Executive in 2009. She had previously led Scottish Development International. Lena Wilson left Scottish Enterprise in October 2017 after she was awarded a
CBE for her contribution to Scotland in 2015. Wilson had also lead the government's "Scottish Oil & Gas jobs taskforce" whose task was completed in 2017. She had received criticism from the
Scottish Parliament over taking a paid, non-executive directorship with the multinational product testing and certification company
Intertek. Wilson had been paid £214,000 a year and she was replaced by Steve Dunlop, Chief Executive of
Scottish Canals, who was offered £168,000. Steve Dunlop was still one of the top paid civil servants in Scotland. Dunlop resigned in 2020 and Linda Hanna became the interim CEO in the same month, with Adrian Gillespie taking over as CEO in June 2021. ==Structure==