Scotland has relied on the electronic sector

Ms Alexander, speaking to BBC Radio Scotland ahead of the launch, conceded that conditions have changed and that Scotland is unlikely to win future inward investments for things like computer assembly.

"There will be manufacturing jobs, but they are going to be in highly skilled areas, " she said.

"What's changed is that for much of the last 20 years Scotland was the cheap place in Europe for American and Japanese companies wanting to come into the European Union and you know we are simply not going to be the cheap, or low cost place in the way that, perhaps, Hungary or the Czech Republic will be in the future.

"What we are trying to do is say, 'What is it about Scotland that the world really values?'

'Need venture capital'

"It is the skills of our people and the ideas locked up in our universities, so it is 'How do we grow more global, Scottish companies based on our own knowledge and our tradition of innovation?'"

The move away from Scotland as a low cost manufacturing base can be seen in the job losses at Motorola's Bathgate mobile phone factory, Compaq's Erskine assembly plant and NEC's Livingston semiconductor facility.

But Ms Alexander believes that Scotland's past glories carry a lot of weight and that they are enough to help differentiate it in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

She said the trick for the future will be "turning invented in Scotland into made in Scotland".

Ms Alexander said: "One of the things that we need to do is attract international venture capital into Scotland, we need to try to create technology licensing agreements, we need to get better links with our universities, we need to partner with companies around the world.

The closure of the Motorola plant at Bathgate was a blow

"All of that has not been the core business of Locate in Scotland or Scottish Trade International in the past and it needs to be in the future."

The minister is due to travel to the United States, with Scottish Secretary Helen Liddell, in the coming weeks on a trade mission.

The executive is keen to see ex-pat Scots become ambassadors for the country, and Ms Alexander is likely to press that message while in the US.

She said: "It's about telling a new Scottish story to the world and one of the things we are going to do as part of that is to start networking with friends of Scotland around the world.

"It's almost impossible to go anywhere in the world and find people who are hostile to Scotland.

"We have incredible goodwill and its making sure that that image around the world actually accords with the reality of what is going on in Scotland."