Why don't companies place a higher value on their support specialists? Why couldn't they be used as a source of income?

A new survey of corporate policies on IT has found that only 15% of IT directors actually have a seat on the board, despite the growing importance of their area of expertise. The study confirms that most companies fail to recognise the potential of their specialists. It the great majority of cases, they are treated as a cost centre, rather than a potential income generator.

The same principles arising from this investigation of IT could, of course, be readily extended to facilities management. There is an ongoing argument (some of it on i-FM's Discussion pages) about FM's place in board decision-making. It is also not difficult to imagine a scenario in which an FM department becomes an income-generating business unit - for example, on a business park where one company's in-house team provides services to other tenants.

"Corporate Venturing: the IT Opportunity" was carried out by Interregnum (www.interregnum.com), a consultancy focusing on two central questions:

• why do IT companies based in the US build greater shareholder value than their European counterparts?
• why do US IT companies fail to establish effective European operations?

Perhaps we need someone to do a similar job for the FM business.

Elliott Chase