Nicola Sturgeon has criticised her government's former view of London as a threat to Scotland's economy and pledged to engage more closely with the UK capital to find business opportunities for Scotland.

Ms Sturgeon today announced a £78 million innovation fund to encourage businesses to come up with 1,000 new commercial products to improve the wellbeing of the people of Scotland and around the world.

It comes on the back of the announcement earlier this month that the Scottish Government will establish three new innovation and investment hubs in London, Brussels and Dublin.

In a speech to the Scottish Council for Development & Industry (SCDI), Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Government has "for too long seen London as a threat".

Her predecessor Alex Salmond described London as "the dark star of the economy, inexorably sucking in resources, people and energy" during the referendum campaign last year while Ms Sturgeon was serving as deputy first minister and cabinet secretary for investment.

SCDI chief executive Ross Martin said there has been a noticeable shift in the Scottish Government's attitude to business from "dour" to "do-er" since Ms Sturgeon took over as First Minister.

Ms Sturgeon said: "This is probably a self-criticism of the government as opposed to trying to suggest it has been a feature of businesses, but I think for too long we have seen London as a threat.

"We've seen London almost, in economic terms, a rival.

"Of course we will want to compete and be competitive, but actually I think there is more in it for us to see London as an opportunity.

"It's a major international centre. Businesses and companies will seek to locate and to invest in London, but as they expand they might see Scotland as good value place to expand into.

"So, particularly with London, it is about seeing it as an opportunity not just as a rival in terms of economic investment."

She said the business hubs are "intended to be places where connections are made, where there can be a Team Scotland approach and where we can actively go and look for the international connections there".

"We hope to have them up and running in the first part of next year," she said.

"The key principle behind them is the understanding and the recognition that we have to reach out if we want to be the best place to do business, we can't just expect people to automatically find their way here.

"We have to go to where companies and others are and actually make those connections ourselves."

Mr Martin said there has been a new "emerging landscape" of business engagement from the Scottish Government since Ms Sturgeon took over.

"Somebody summed this up last week for me when I was asking them about their view of the positioning of the Scottish Government," he said.

"They, rather tongue in cheek, said: 'They're going from dour, as in 'ye cannae', to do-er, as in 'ye can'.'

"I think that was a pretty neat summation of (Ms Sturgeon), and that is what Nicola has brought to the post in the almost a year since taking over as First Minister.

"It's certainly an engaging relationship that we have between SCDI and the Scottish Government."

Ms Sturgeon said Scotland has a "very long-standing and very proud reputation" for innovation as she announced the fund 87 years to the day since Ayrshire-born biologist Sir Alexander Fleming discovered the anti-bacterial properties of penicillin.

Last week, the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), which counts Sir Alexander among its former members, warned the Scottish Government risks being branded "anti-science" following its ban on genetically modified (GM) crops.

The RSE raised further concerns about the long-standing vacancy for the post of Scottish Government chief scientific adviser and other vacancies on the Scottish Scientific Advisory Council.

SNP MSP Rob Gibson, convener of Holyrood's Rural Affairs Committee, accused agrochemical firms of paying "dirty money to support dirty science to make bigger profits" from GM crops.

Ms Sturgeon today acknowledged that the decision to ban GM crops "wasn't based entirely and purely on a scientific argument".

"It was about how we make sure that one of our key growth sectors of our economy, food and drink, is not undermined," she said.

"It is the clean and green reputation that drives the success of that and continues to be at its very heart.

"Interestingly, there have been a significant number of countries that have since followed suit and also taken the same decision that Scotland did around the cultivation of GM crops.

"Of course, the decision does not affect research in labs and that is a point that has been recognised by everyone.

"We will only succeed if we are a country that is open to new ideas, open to new technologies, open to being the place where we develop those ideas and technology, and that is what the announcement that I have made today was all about."

She added: "Innovation is something that Scotland has a very long-standing and very proud global reputation for.

"It is exactly 87 years ago today, September 28 1928, that Alexander Fleming first noticed the possible anti-bacterial properties of penicillin.

"Penicillin, of course, is one of probably hundreds of Scottish innovations which have improved the wellbeing of people right across the world."