THE theme of weeks one and two of this debate has been about how much traditional sectors of our economy still have to offer in meeting Scotland's future competitive challenges, generating fresh wealth and underwriting the continued prosperity of Scotland's people.

When a small, open economy, like ours, has endured as many shocks as we have in the past half century, there's an understandable instinct to let what's left of the old take care of itself and pour all our energies into embracing and nurturing the new.

There's plenty of political mileage in talking about change and renewal. But when Tory Blair tells us we must "lock horns with modernity" in a fast-forwarding world, he - like other politicians who can't stop warning us about the competitive threat from China and India - runs the risk of repeating old mistakes.

The pace of industrial and economic change may indeed have quickened, although I suspect those who drove the original Industrial Revolution might beg to differ about who has had the more exhilarating ride.

But it is not enough to respond to that change by concluding that the old game is up and urging everyone to move on to the next one. Many of the past policy responses that focused heavily on government supporting entirely new industries and technologies have failed because, in their turn, they too succumbed to fresh economic shocks to the system.

Thus the great icons of 1960s regional policy, like the Linwood car assembly plant and the Invergordon aluminium smelter, were soon no more.

And some of the big names in Silicon Glen have, within a decade or two, succumbed to intensifying commercial pressures and moved productive capacity to emerging, lowercost locations.

The dividends of embracing the new can prove very shortlived. That's not an argument against innovation. But it is a plea to remember that, faced with change, however rapid, even the most traditional industry or business can find ways of reinventing itself and its ability to compete.

The Scottish Executive's ambition to foster a smarter, more successful Scotland should apply as much to longestablished industries and services as to those dependent on the wonders of engineered silicon or gene therapy.

You don't have to travel very far in the Scottish industrial undergrowth to find business leaders who feel government and its agencies have neglected their needs. This view is at its most acute in the more traditional sectors of manufacturing, which feels squeezed for attention by the newer technologies on the one hand and by our burgeoning service sector on the other.

In one sense, this feeling of neglect is misplaced. Government has actually been slow to adjust to the reality of an increasingly services-dominated economy. Witness the wealth of official data that is still generated about specific industries within manufacturing compared with what we know about what goes on in the service sector.

Manufacturers aren't the only ones who feel unloved. Not so long ago Scotland's financial sector was bemoaning how little attention or support it got from government, compared with the armies of civil servants employed to administer financial support to our farmers.

Beneath the sectional grumbling about who is valued and who is not, there lies, I suspect, a deeper problem. All of us in Scotland need to adjust the tone of our debate about the consequences of change. In half a century we have lost much of our pre-eminence in heavy engineering, we have seen the fruits of Wilsonian regional policy come and go, and watched Silicon Glen shrink.

We have learned from these successive shocks that change brings pain. We have yet to fully understand that change is also a source of fresh opportunity, if only we can break down the barriers and allow these opportunities to crystallise.

In their different ways, that's what all the writers are saying elsewhere on this page.

The business health of Scotland is of importance to everybody, and The Herald welcomes your views.

Write to the Business Editor, The Herald, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow G2 3QB, or email business@theherald. co. uk