The view from Dr Alan Gillespie's fifth-floor office in Industrial Development Board House in the heart of Belfast is a window on the transformation of the city in the last six years.
To the right, on what was once derelict wasteland, stands the new Halifax customer call centre, which promises to create 1,500 jobs. To the left in the distance is Lanyon Place, home to the five-star Hilton Hotel and BT Tower.
Construction cranes dominate the skyline and labourers finish the next generation of offices.
But away from the commercial heart of the city and out of the line of vision from Industrial Development Board House, there is another side of Belfast which Dr Gillespie had hoped potential investors would never see again.
Ugly riots between various factions of the community in small pockets of the city have dominated July's media coverage of Northern Ireland.
"It was most vividly represented for me when I was in London recently and I opened the Evening Standard newspaper. On page three, there were photographs of a combination of people standing at bonfires with pistols and what were allegedly nationalist youths throwing stones at the police," Dr Gillespie said. "Our people are going to Swindon and Basingstoke and Reading saying to companies there, `it is awfully crowded in the south of England, it is very expensive, labour is in short supply and you have outrageous turnover - we have the answer for you, come to Northern Ireland'," he added.
But Dr Gillespie says it becomes a soul-destroying job against the backdrop of unrest. "[But] we are through the middle of July now and we can move forward, we have a team around the world who have become accustomed to having setbacks to our image and you trade your way through it," he said.
Dr Gillespie believes that there has been sufficient modernisation and renewal of the structure of business in Northern Ireland to offset the damage caused by negative media images in the eyes of the investment community.
Earlier this year the board released its best set of annual results, showing it had secured more than 7,500 jobs in the last 12 months. In his last term as board chairman, Dr Gillespie is determined the agency should maintain this momentum. This is also the last year the board will exist in its current form.
A super agency, Invest Northern Ireland, will bring all existing agencies under one umbrella body and will co-ordinate economic investment and development in the North from early next year.
Dr Gillespie, recently appointed chairman of Ulster Bank, is adamant that neither he nor the team at the development agency will show any signs of taking it easy. Since he was appointed IDB chairman in 1998, Belfast-born Dr Gillespie has brought his own dynamic, demanding and sometimes aggressive style to bear on the agency. The 50-year old Cambridge University graduate, is by his own admission results-driven.
A former partner and managing director of merchant bank Goldman Sachs, his personal and industry contacts have proved useful in opening doors for the board.
He says much of his investment work was conducted behind the scenes giving what he describes as "good solid advice" on the merits of doing business in Northern Ireland.
He cites two particular investment decisions that were particularly important to him. "I played some role in persuading David Sainsbury that Sainsbury's supermarket group should come into Northern Ireland."
In 1995 Sainsbury's announced a £100-million sterling (#163 million) investment in the North, closely followed by other British retail giants, Tesco and Safeway.
He also mentions an MGN Cinema investment as one that symbolised a change in the perception of companies towards Northern Ireland.
"MGN Cinemas had built 20 multiplex cinemas in the UK and didn't have one in Northern Ireland and I said to the chief executive that there was no reason why he shouldn't make a major investment in bringing a modern cinema complex to Northern Ireland and they did. These were important investments because we needed to start to wear some of the badges of being normal in Northern Ireland and some of those badges included having Sainsbury's come here, have MGN come here and other airlines come here," Dr Gillespie said.
But there have also been major disappointments.
"I can think of one situation which was an important company in a sector that we were really pursuing and we had been very close to having them in Northern Ireland and then the Canary Wharf bomb went off. It was very visible and they just said to me that there was no way that they would even take it to their board of directors. Today that company employs many hundreds of people in Scotland and that hurts," he added.
According to Dr Gillespie, Northern Ireland faces a challenge in respect of the IT and software sector; it has spent the last four years building up its reputation in this area only to find that it is now contracting.
He adds that trying to converge accurately with business cycles will be another challenge. "Over the last few years we had a remarkable line-up of three things happening at the same time for us. The business cycle globally was in a tremendous upswing; on top of that, we had tremendously liquid capital markets and we had this phenomenal period of innovation and technology. Those three things coincided with what was going on in Northern Ireland; after 25 years of unrest this society decided it was going to do something different, so we were ready for business at a time when the world really needed us," Dr Gillespie said.
He believes that by concentrating on existing companies and helping them to boost exports, the North's economic growth can continue.
The agency will present a new Northern Ireland brand image soon to promote itself to existing and potential investors.
"It is time to refresh the brand and our new strap-line will be Northern Ireland - Fresh Talent at Work. We want to get across that this is a very nice place to live and do business and we have very good people who are here for investors to harness," he said.
