Brain game was just the start for an ambitious ideas man

Having previously enjoyed a stellar decade at Microsoft, where he burnished his business and technical reputation, he probably does not need to work another day in his life.

But the entrepreneurial spirit which led him to leave Scotland and pursue his business dreams across the Atlantic at just 21 in 1986 still burns brightly within.

"Every fibre of my body tells me this is what I am meant to do," said the Seattle-based entrepreneur, in Scotland recently to address a Prince's Trust event.

"That's where my heart feels at home - being in the entrepreneurial community and trying to do whatever I can to provide fantastic products."

And there can be no doubt that is what Mr Tait achieved with Cranium. The game, which he built with former Microsoft colleague Whit Alexander, took the world by storm, and would go on to spawn more than 40 games, books and spin-offs.

Having literally built the prototype with cardboard and PowerPoint, it ultimately created the third biggest games company in the world.

After 10 meteoric years, it was sold to Hasbro, which has just opened talks over a deal to acquire Dreamworks Animation, for $77 million in 2008.

Mr Tait is justifiably proud of what the "amazing team" assembled at Cranium achieved over that 10-year spell, but is content to leave that part of his life behind.

"I still love making games for my kids and playing games," he said, when asked if would consider trying to design the next Cranium. "But we had such an amazing ride and left a footprint in the sand. For me, I like to acknowledge that history and say I don't think it could get any better than that for me.

"To have left that little piece of laughter in society makes me so happy."

Besides, he is not exactly short on the ideas front.

Since leaving Cranium Mr Tait has developed four businesses, all of which he reports are starting to make their presence felt across the Atlantic.

Golazo, the functional drinks company he has developed for footballers, is performing well, as is Simple & Crisp, a dehydrated fruit crisp which has just been listed by Whole Foods in the US.

Moment, which makes high-end lenses for smartphones, was one of the top fundraisers on the Kickstarter platform last year, while clothing brand Maker Wear is now on sale at 200 Target stores in America.

Mr Tait said he is now applying many of the lessons he learned during his time at Cranium to his current enterprises.

Turning to football, one of his life's biggest passions, for an analogy, he said: "I play centre midfield at football. For me it is always surrounding myself with people who can complement what I do.

"At Cranium we just had an extraordinary team of people, everyone from a kindergarten teacher all the way through to expert games makers.

"It was just a unique group of people who came together to create history."

Just as building teams is a guiding philosophy for the businessman, Mr Tait is equally keen to encourage young entrepreneurs.

After leaving Cranium he set up BoomBoom, a Seattle-based start-up incubator which has so far "sparked" four businesses and taken many young entrepreneurs under its wing.

Boom Boom, in fact, provides exactly the sort of support that Mr Tait said was not available to him when he began his entrepreneurial journey in the mid 1980s.

Born in Broughty Ferry and raised in Helensburgh, where he attended Hermitage Academy, he gained a degree in computer science at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

As part of his thesis, he designed a product which he wanted to take to market, but quickly found there was no "sense of support structure or community for young entrepreneurs."

Venture capitalists were also thin on the ground.

Approaching the head of a prominent business school about his "plight," he was promptly told that the only place he could realise his dream was in the United States.

Taking that advice on board, he applied to four business schools in America and secured a place at Dartmouth, a prestigious Ivy League School in New Hampshire.

From there he secured a job with Microsoft, where he found himself working on operating systems, internet applications and business modelling. He was named Microsoft employee of the year in 1995.

Mr Tait said he found the absence of entrepreneurial role models in Scotland deeply frustrating when he was embarking on his career, not least because of the country's rich tradition of producing entrepreneurs.

But he is pleased to note that the situation in Scotland is radically different now.

"It's a different country now to the one I grew up (in)," he said. "It's very exciting for me. I was just driving in (to Glasgow) tonight and seeing all the new architecture and all of the vibrancy that Glasgow and Scotland has to offer. I do see a different attitude.

"Scotland has an amazing heritage of inventors and entrepreneurs. It is really exciting for me to see that galvanising and that opportunity being presented to young people.

"We are a culture of inventors. We have gone through a period where that sharpness was dulled, and I feel it coming back."

So what advice would he offer to the entrepreneurial stars of tomorrow?

"What I like to tell people is that anyone can do what we did," he said, shortly before speaking at The Prince's Trust Growth Fund Awards in Glasgow.

"We were printing the cards at home. We were running play tests in people's houses. It just took the courage to step forward.

"It wasn't a freak of nature or a stroke of genius. It was just two guys who decided we are going to try and make a game.

"So many people get thwarted at the first stage of creating a prototype. I can't really underscore the importance of taking that first step (enough) - it is intimidating and can really slow people down."