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Science and innovation – the heart of the economy

The need to address the way the UK supports its science and technology talent and converts that talent into economic growth has never been more important. According to Phil Willis, Former Chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee, change is imperative if the UK is to remain competitive: "We need to have an action plan to put science and innovation right at the heart of the new coalition's agenda and at the heart of the private sector agenda too," says Willis. "It requires a re-engineering of the whole landscape which means our research base, our university base and our industrial base."

Mr Willis chaired GovNet Communications packed Science & Innovation 2010 Conference at the QEII Conference Centre yesterday. The capacity audience had access to a high quality panel of speakers including Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Professor Adrian Smith, Director General of Science and Research in BIS, and Professor Sir John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government.

Citing the diverse and serious challenges that appear in his intray – from swine flu to the Icelandic volcano – Professor Beddington noted: "We have the best science and engineering base in the world and that's not easy to achieve. We now need collaboration between government and industry, collaboration between different areas of government and different areas of science. We also need to collaborate internationally in much more exciting ways."

Addressing the creation of scientific talent in the UK, Sir Alan Langlands noted that the past ten years has given the education sector a strong base on which to deliver: "Higher education does and will continue to have a key role to play in the development of a knowledge economy. We will do that through the supply of graduates and the flow of knowledge and ideas into the economy and society," he said. "Even in these constrained times we have to start with that commitment."

However, it is the management of that talent that appears to provide one of the greatest challenges for the country. Nigel Whitehead, Group Managing Director of Programmes and Support at BAE Systems spoke of the need for 'Employer Ambition' – "Employer ambition is about generating the demand for those skills and exploiting those skills in order to achieve growth," he said. "We're not achieving the same growth rates or the same exploitation rates in science and technology as our competitors.”

Good leadership, argues Whitehead is crucial to engendering a culture where high skills are both valued and exploited.

Dr Hermann Hauser, a Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners Limited used his address to put forward the concept of dedicated centres that would help convert university led research into practical business ideas. "The race between nations to globalise and commercialise research has intensified," he said. "We need to invest £50 - 100m over the next 10 years per sector. There should be a third from government, a third from industry and the remainder from government/EU project funding."