Where is Britain’s innovative edge?
If Professor James Woudhuysen – one of the panellists at the NESTA/Editorial Intelligence/Friends Provident and Reuters breakfast debate on ‘Where is Britain’s innovative edge?’ – was Prime Minister, he would, I’d wager, try to solve all of our problems with transport in the UK (at least he’d give it a good try). He shook his head in bafflement and asked why couldn’t the UK use its brainpower and industrial clout to create a first rate transport system (even one as modern as that seen in China) to ensure that most of us get a seat or the London to Liverpool journey does not take five hours to complete. Woudhuysen scathingly (and amusingly) exposed what he regarded as the gap between rhetoric and reality in the present government’s plans for developing renewable energy. He read out the words from a DTI website which congratulated itself for making people more ‘aware’ of the issue, whilst it had not produced much change in the UK’s use of renewable energy. The government was, therefore, the villain in Woudhuysen’s assessment of Britain’s innovative edge. If New Labour did make Crossrail happen, Professor Woudhuysen might be happier. (Today, Mr Blair is reported to be ‘absolutely committed to it’ but the issue of funding is yet to be agreed.) He insisted he was not being negative. Rather it was those who did not believe we could have sleek, fast trains or build 1,000s of affordable homes who were defeatist, said Woudhuysen. (However, on the second point it may be Ikea rather than New Labour which comes to our rescue.)
Martin Vander Weyer, the business editor of The Spectator, surprised everyone by seeming to support Gordon Brown in so far as the Chancellor had directed more money into research and development than his predecessors. Whilst Vander Weyer was careful to qualify his comment later (in case anyone believed he had had a political conversion), he asserted that the UK’s innovative performance was pretty good in the areas of science and technology. He said the main problem was that the country had a ‘nascent’ VC culture but slowly that was changing (witness the popularity of the Dragon’s Den). Jane Stevens, operations managing director at Friends Provident sang the praises of innovation in the UK financial services sector, including (to the surprise of fellow panellists) the much maligned mortgage endowment policy. In this world, automation had enabled companies to handle countless more customers at once. She acknowledged these were not fiercely exciting innovations. But nonetheless, the UK was good at it and the sector was contributing significantly to the country’s wealth.
Amanda West, global head of innovation at Reuters talked about the media company’s quest for new ideas. Every idea at the company must pass a ‘venture board’ test based either on predicted revenue generation or customer needs. Might this mean some big ideas never see the light of day, one member of the audience asked. He cited Michael Farraday’s response when asked to justify his invention for electricity: ‘What is the point of having a baby?’ However, Ms West was very clear about the benefits of the innovation system at Reuters and referred to a prototype product which will deliver agricultural and weather data to Indian farmers by mobile phone. They will need to collaborate with a telecoms firm to achieve this and Ms West said she believes in such cooperation as a driving force of innovation (though in some sectors, the players will be too competitive to co-operate, she acknowledged). She also said that people can only transform half-baked ideas into fully cooked ones if they are passionate about the idea.
Did the session answer the question about Britain’s innovative edge? I don’t think so, although it gave everyone plenty of food for thought. Some believed the government should be more robust and committed whilst others thought it should get out of the way.
As the crowd dispersed, chatting amiably, I bumped into a fellow commuter who swears by his Brompton fold-up bicycle (which he had with him). I happen to know a bit about this bike. I see a lot of them on the Cambridge to London train. I also know that it has an almost cult following and there is a website dedicated to the art of folding things (a very challenging concept from an engineering perspective). Brompton is a UK company based in Middlesex which crafts its products for a very loyal customer base. The bikes are also quite expensive, though worth it in the eyes of the punter. A better example of UK innovation would be hard to find. The Brompton user remarked as we parted that as far as he knows they have never had government backing.
Morice Mendoza is the editor of World Business.
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March 13th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
I was at the meeting and it was certainly lively and interactive. Jane Stevens, Martin Vander Weyer and Amanda West constructed a strong case that Britain has an innovative edge which is developing under Gordon Brown’s benign policies. Then James Woudhuysen weighed in with a combative and amusing demolition. He argued that we are less innovative than the Victorians were, less innovative than we think we are and much less innovative than we need to be.
Plainly there is plenty of effective innovation in Britain today – from the flourishing army of small of companies on AIM up to the giants like Virgin, Tesco and Reckitt Benckiser. However the government sector is some 40% of the economy and rate of innovation there is painfully slow.
The debate will continue. There are more comments on this meeting on my blog http//www.bqf.org.uk/innovation/ Let’s have more meetings like this one!
April 11th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
As I noted in my contribution to the discussion, the media trivialises innovation in the UK. See the current obsession with Weblogging and Second Life. And, ironically, the media sector is one of the least innovative sectors in the UK. It moves forward incrementally, invests minimally, and derives its major innovations — such as Weblogging and online video (eg: YouTube) — from elsewhere. Often these innovations were developed with little capital. If we want to know where Britain’s innovative edge the media needs to get better at understanding and rooting out real innovation — and it could create more innovations itself!
June 12th, 2007 at 1:34 am
“The Brompton user remarked as we parted that as far as he knows they have never had government backing.”
So that’s why they’ve been so successful! Government backing inevitably means government strings.
But Paul Sloane has grasped the nub of the issue.
“However the government sector is some 40% of the economy and rate of innovation there is painfully slow.”
One might say that it is almost non-existent. But that is not the sole problem: the high taxes that allow the state to control 40% of the economy and, more importantly, the complexity of those taxes means that an awful lot of money that should be invested in innovations (or even productive parts of the economy) are instead being swallowed up, not only by the taxes themselves, but also the cost of compliance.
“Whilst Vander Weyer was careful to qualify his comment later (in case anyone believed he had had a political conversion), he asserted that the UK’s innovative performance was pretty good in the areas of science and technology.”
This is a particularly good example, with the EU’s REACH Directive adding tens of thousands of pounds to the already exorbitant costs of bringing, for instance, medical drugs to market.
DK
September 29th, 2007 at 7:43 am
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October 22nd, 2008 at 9:35 am
I agree.. Nice article