Robert Kinnaird

A self-confessed maverick, ever zealous of protecting his self-propelled business activities, his early years were played out against a backcloth of shipbuilding, coal- mining and steel production, as well as a massive presence in heavy engineering companies and suppliers - all this presided over by belching smoke stacks and double-shift blast furnaces. It was a time when central Scotland comprised one of Britain's chief hubs of industrial might.

Although born in Falkirk, circumstances saw the young Kinnaird spend much of his early childhood and early teens in the mining village of Bridgend, north Lanarkshire.

Educated at Chryston High School, he moved on to Coatbridge Technical College where he gained first-class honours in Higher National Engineering.

Then followed an apprenticeship with Drysdale's - one of the Weir group's pump manufacturers. This, in turn, opened up the opportunity to join the Duncan Stewart works - producers of machinery for the sugar manufacturing industry. Before long the ambitious Kinnaird was to become Scottish representative for the Newcastle pump firm Sigmund.

By the early 1950s, however, one of the most profound influences on his budding career occurred when he came under the guidance of the redoubtable Bill Cowan, head of J H Carruthers, the Polmadie crane manufacturing concern.

The company was about to open a presence in the new town of East Kilbride and Kinnaird was destined to spend close on 10 years as its head of sales and marketing, travelling to many parts of the world where marine industrial activity flourished.

But the perceptive young executive sensed signs of change in the air, developments that would exert a traumatic force across Scotland's socio-economic landscape.

He was also a dedicated and loving family man with three children who wanted the best for his family and he knew that now was the time for his next move - a switch into management consultancy.

It came when he accepted a post in the late 1960s with McClintock, Moore & Murray, the Glasgow accounting marketing and management group.

Two years later, he became a director at the shipbroking firm of J & J Denholm, where he spearheaded a management consultancy division. He finally set up his own consultancy - R W Kinnaird & Company Ltd - in 1972.

A long-standing resident of Carmunnock, his family's home just outside Glasgow and a place he loved dearly, Kinnaird never chose to go where the path might lead - he preferred to go where there was no path and blaze a trail. He devoted much time and energy to encouraging the efforts of aspiring entrepreneurs in various parts of the country and derived a lot of quiet satisfaction from their successes.

He was involved in a number of intriguing projects - one such project being very much ahead of its time, Frere Jacques, a French table wine packaged in a "two-glass-sized" clear plastic drinks container. This innovative idea was an attempt to attract supermarkets to the advantages of stocking French table wine and paved the way for the now lucrative market in wine boxes.

But it was his prolific output of weighty and detailed surveys covering all aspects of Scotland's industrial- corporate canvas that grabbed the attention of worldwide subscribers - such information being particularly well received as far away as the US, the Netherlands and Brazil.

On the domestic front, the surveys became prescribed reading at managerial levels in all kinds of companies, local authority job creation units, enterprise organisations and university departments.

This seemingly inexhaustible and always enthusiastic man, who served as a visiting lecturer in marketing at both Glasgow and Strathclyde universities, rebuffed several tempting offers to bring his consultancy beneath the banners of larger companies. The mid 1970s saw him make occasional television appearances, which on one occasion produced an invitation to deliver a series of talks in South Africa.

In the 1980s, Kinnaird diversified very successfully into advertising and public relations - R W Kinnaird & Company was to become one of Scotland's leading agencies, promoting companies such as John Brown, Weir Group and Motorola. He continued in his role of managing director of his company, working with his daughter, until he had to retire due to failing health in 2004.

While leisure time never ranked high on his priorities, he enjoyed walks over the Cathkin Braes, time with his children and grandchildren, reading and an appetite for jazz music. Sadly, however, heart problems in his final years were exacerbated by the onset of dementia.

Kinnaird is survived by his former wife, Jeanette, daughter Marion, sons Robert and Stephen, and three grandchildren.