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I think, you know, for those of us who discussed having this meeting,

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there was a sense that in the US, the deep community gets together to discuss all of these,

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you know, how to do these things better and the UK with practises, oral and Mncube, we're doing the same.

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And wouldn't it be a good idea if we occasionally got together collectively and had similar discussions?

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So I'm very pleased that we finally got here to this point.

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And as every everyone who's been a conference chair will know, I'm relieved to say we're still a couple of minutes ahead of time.

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So enough of me.

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I'm now going to introduce you to the host of the next session, Dr Alison Campbell OBE, who is the director of Knowledge Transfer Ireland.

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The National Office responsible for policy practise and performance of the Irish Knowledge and Technology Transfer System,

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started a career in the biotech industry and has occupied many positions at the academic industry interface and most at King's College London,

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and I was awarded her OBE in 2010 in recognition of her contribution to knowledge transfer.

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So Alison, please do come. Thanks very much, Phil, I think this might have been designed for a tall man being a small woman.

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Probably the only thing that mean the Queen actually have in common. So I'm just moving the microphone back down here.

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I'm sure that when Samarkand won't take the stage, they may need to adjust it back up.

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So. So good afternoon.

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I'm absolutely thrilled to be here, and I'm delighted to be asked to moderate this this starting session at the Oxford United summit.

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This is this is a really, I think, really important, as Phil was saying, a really important event.

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I've been very fortunate myself to to work at the nexus between university and industry interaction.

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So probably more years than I'd like to mention now.

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Although a taxi driver did say to me yesterday, Oh, you retired immediately went and bought more ice cream.

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But what I have seen, I've been really fortunate to work in the UK and Europe and have a role on on the autumn board in the USA.

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And from what I've seen and what I've heard in terms the levels of conversations that are going on at the moment,

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it really does seem particularly timely to be having this event.

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And as Patrick said, it's against a very interesting political and economic backdrop.

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We were looking at the different ways in which nations are both looking at and investing in research, and it's changing.

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But so too are their expectations on outcomes, and that extends beyond the academy into industrial strategy.

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And that brings with it new opportunities and challenges. And that's what this this event is is all about.

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But this afternoon, we have the privilege of hearing from views from some key policymakers and opinion leaders from both sides of the Atlantic.

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And I'm just the landmass that's in between. So we'll we'll first hear from Smart Wolpert and then Dr Copan.

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We'll talk after which they should be. If all the moderating and sharing goes to plan Typekit for Q&A from all of you.

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So before he takes to the stage. For those of you who may not know him from our wonderful next academic industry and the international community here,

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a very brief introduction to Professor Smart Wolpert.

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He's chief executive of UK Research and Innovation, which, as it says on the tin,

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is responsible for the public funding of research and innovation in the UK.

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Before he took on that role, he was UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser and has a really rich and deep pedigree in research and innovation.

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He was for 10 years director of the Wellcome Trust.

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Before that, he was professor of medicine and head of the Division of Medicine at Imperial College London.

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And his many other highlights to his career,

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including being on the Advisory Board of Infrastructure UK and the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research in the UK,

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as well as the UK, India and CEO Forum.

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Mark received his knighthood in 2009 for services to medical research and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011.

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I'm sure you'll warmly welcome him to the stage mark.

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Thank you very much indeed, Alison, I'm delighted to be here.

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And I'm reflecting that the last time I was in this lecture theatre, I was at something called the Cambridge Conference.

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Now, whether that was Oxford, annexing Cambridge or Cambridge annexing Oxford, I don't know.

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But it wasn't an entirely irrelevant meeting to this because it was actually a conference

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that brings together the heads of national mapping agencies from across the world.

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And of course, the thing that transformed mapping was clocks and.

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Clocks have remained at the forefront of many of the technological advances that we are talking about today.

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And in fact, I think people don't realise how important clocks are, particularly those atomic clocks ticking away on satellites.

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And so clocks really are at the forefront of the current industrial revolution.

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And a lot of the work, of course, came at a very basic, curiosity inspired research.

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So we are at a very extraordinary time.

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And I think it's important to raise our eyes above national issues to recognise that the world in which we are working and living is changing in,

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I think, four extraordinary ways. There is the first is a demographic change.

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Seven and a half billion people on the planet with all of the demands that we

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make on the natural resources of the planet and the pollution that we produce,

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both visible in the form of plastics, for example, and invisible in the form of gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

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But within the demography are also extraordinary changes as well.

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Here we are living in Europe with ageing populations in North America, in Japan,

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in China, ageing populations and of course, in other parts of the world.

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Many parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South America, young populations.

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And of course, that creates a whole series of challenges opportunities.

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But also key opportunities for innovation.

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And so you could look and say that it is actually innovation that's enabled us to be seven and a half billion people on the planet.

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It's been our ability to modify our environment so that humans can live in almost every environment on the planet.

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But the problems that come from seven and a half billion people are very obvious and will require major changes.

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So science and technology has got us here and it's got to get us out of here as well.

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The world of research is changing in extraordinary ways. And of course,

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a lot of that is powered by technological change in the form of extraordinary engineering that enables us

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to develop amazing sensors in the ability to handle data sets in ways which were never possible before.

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And all of that actually has driven the need for team working, multidisciplinary work,

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interdisciplinary work in the same way that the world of research is changing,

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the world of business is changing as well, again powered by many of the same things that I've been talking about.

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And so the distinction between manufacturing and services is becoming blurred.

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Jet engine you buy by the hour powered by the hour. Increasingly,

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the manufactured object provides the source of a service business and then underpinning

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all of this societies are changing and they're changing in somewhat unpredictable ways.

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We're seeing the rise of populism. We can't take our growth, our licence to practise as it were for granted.

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And I think that one of the important things with UK research innovation coming into being is

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the fact that I think we have to engage with publics in ways that we've never done before,

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partly because I think everyone here recognises that there are there is such a thing as truth.

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It is the nature of research to uncover things that are will stand the test of time.

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So that is really important and you can research innovation importantly, includes the arts, the humanities and social sciences.

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Because unless we work effectively with those disciplines, then I think we'll be missing major opportunities.

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So the industrial revolution is a sort of starting to crash into each other.

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I think this is probably currently the fourth. The first, of course, is illustrated with that steam engine in the top right of the slide.

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But this industrial revolution is also powered by steam, but it's science, technology,

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engineering, the arts and mathematics, and I include in the arts design, the social sciences.

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It's a it is an extraordinary time with extraordinary opportunities and that gap between exploitation of the digital world,

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together with the physical and biological worlds. That's where the exciting interface is.

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There is a fusion which is happening literally in the case of the design of products

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such as some of the extraordinary artificial limbs that are being developed,

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one called the Blatchford Limb one, the major engineering prise in the UK, the Robert Award, a few years ago.

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So the technologies are extraordinary. The data, A.I., robotics, new materials, the ability to exploit these, and in my area of biomedical sciences,

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biological genomics has taken us to extraordinary places where we can now think about editing genomes.

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And all of this has the enormous potential to improve the quality of life of people across the planet and to generate prosperity.

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But of course, there are challenges of all of these technologies, and each and every one of them is neutral.

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It's how we apply them that matters. And this is where governments have to think very carefully.

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You can see all the debate that's going on at the moment around the very big technology industries.

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And I think one of the things that is actually critical is that as far as possible,

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we work responsibly when we are innovating in terms of how we implement innovation.

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I'm not going to say an enormous amount about UK research innovation. Thank you for the introduction, Patrick.

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At the beginning, we are in fact, in a year old.

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But just over a year ago, there's a new organisation and we bring together the seven research councils research

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England and thank you to researching and for sponsoring this conference and Innovate UK.

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So we bring together the innovation agency and our research councils under a single organisational umbrella.

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And if I were to summarise what we are about in three words, it is simply knowledge with impact.

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And so we have seven and a half billion pounds a year, all garnered from the pockets of taxpayers.

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And I think what I as a taxpayer would like from UK research and innovation is that, first of all,

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it generates discoveries, but discovering things really has an impact when they are providing benefits to society.

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Now those are the benefits of pure excitement of new knowledge.

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So the discovery discovery of the Higgs boson of the identification of gravitational waves have excited the public,

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so we should never forget the cultural importance.

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But at the end of the day, what governments care about, they care about the health, wellbeing, resilience and security of their populations.

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And that, in turn, depends on economic prosperity.

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And so we are about. Helping to fund the discoveries,

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but also working with the people that make these discoveries to catalyse turning them into utility of different forms for society.

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So at the top, it's the the impacts, the economic impact, that social prosperity, the enriched, healthier, more resilient, more sustainable society.

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Underpinning that of the frontiers of human knowledge and understanding.

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And then we can do our job properly if we provide the best environment for research and innovation.

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And that is, I would say, first and foremost about people. And this is an international audience.

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It is a diverse audience and we will only have the best research and innovation if we have a diverse population.

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And so having people from all over the world is critical.

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The University of Oxford is a diverse environment,

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although it's working hard on diversity at every level in terms of undergraduates all the way through.

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And so people is what matters at the end of the day. But of course, people can only give of their best if they're in a an excellent environment.

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And so that's about having a trusted and diverse system.

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And one of the things that's really important to us is the culture of research, and this is an integrated thing.

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You can't tackle diversity on its own and ignore bullying and harassment or ignore questions of research reproducibility.

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This all ties together at the end of the day. And so Jennifer Rubin, who's head of the Economic and Social Sciences Social Sciences Research Council,

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is taking on that as a sort of champion for Ukraine. And then, of course, you can only do research on innovation if you have the right infrastructure.

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And of course, that's what great universities provide. And we have to be a decent organisation if all of this is going to come together.

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So the UK has an industrial strategy and it is an industrial strategy which basically focuses

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on the underpinning features that you need in order to have that good economic prosperity.

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And you can't really have an industrial strategy which isn't focussed on science,

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engineering, technology, the arts, social sciences, design, mathematics.

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So it's a good thing for research, and there are four grand challenges within that.

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And these are not sort of top down tablets from some mountain.

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They are, if you like, where the top down meets the bottom up, they're about clean growth.

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Tackling the seven and a half billion question in terms of energy and eliminating plastic waste as far as

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possible about tackling the demographic changes are changing society about the whole question of mobility.

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And it isn't just mobility of people, it's mobility of goods, of services, of bits and bytes.

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It's about digital mobility as much as mobility of people.

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I'm constantly struck now how video conferencing is now so good that actually a lot of travel can potentially be eliminated.

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Although there is nothing to beat a conference like this where physical networking does happen and you meet people you wouldn't meet otherwise.

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And of course, underpinning all of this is AI and the data economy.

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It is that transformation in the ability to move data around and analyse and use it.

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And underneath that, we've created a new challenge fund, the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

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And you can read the titles of the sorts of challenges that have been identified.

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And each of these is it's industry led in the sense that these are tackling the problems that industry has identified as being important to them,

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but equally, they are working with academia. It is knowledge with impact at the end of the day.

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And so the Faraday battery challenge is a very good example of that.

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There is a blue plaque and not very far from here denoting where the lithium ion battery was invented,

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although it's worth saying that the person who invented it has a very good example of global mobility.

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But clearly,

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energy storage is one of the key issues in a world of variable energy production where you have intermittent wind production or solar production.

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You can't have intermittent power supplies, so we need storage.

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I could go through each of these, but I went, you'll be relieved to hear and I am conscious I need to stop in about seven minutes time.

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I'm just going to go through a few areas because I think it's just worth looking at it through

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the lens of some of the technologies and technologies I've already been talking about,

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of course, clocks. But this is an area where the UK is undoubtedly a world leader and instead of a mechanism of support that I think has been very

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powerful and started in the era of the research council's working on their only pisarski and for quantum hubs were created,

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distributed around the country, working together and 800 million pounds won around sensors and metrology won around quantum enhanced imaging,

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one around network, quantum information technologies and then quantum communications technologies.

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And, of course, the potential of new, very powerful sensors, for example, gravity sensors.

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The ability single pixel cameras means that we are going to be able to sense the world in

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ways again that are almost beyond imagination at the moment in terms of the potential.

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And but of course, the next phase is taking this technology,

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which is at the point at which it can be commercialised, and that's where we've got to already.

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And so there's already, as part of this work, been a lot of collaboration with industry new companies such as M Squared Lasers,

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which was shortlisted for the MacRobert prise.

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Big companies such as Leonardo and We All Know A recently announced a second phase of the quantum support,

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which is 153 million of taxpayer funds which will support businesses delivering quantum

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enabled products help the technological transfer and growth of the businesses.

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And that brings along 205 million pounds leveraged committed by industry in support of that.

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And so the UK investment over quite a sustained period now in quantum technologies is now over a billion pounds of funding.

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And it's a really good example of how universities have worked with industry in all kinds of way,

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everything from licencing to spin outs to collaboration for a technology that

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is still quite difficult for a classic private equity investors to invest in,

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this is hard technology to understand.

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I remember when I was the government chief scientific adviser, we actually produced a report for policymakers on quantum technologies,

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and the community was resistant to it at first because they thought it was all obvious when it might have been to them.

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But they once they got into it, they really enjoyed producing it,

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and it was quite interesting actually seeing how they were communicating it to each other.

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And in the end, I think it was valuable for the technological, the technical community,

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as well as for government policymakers, compound semiconductors.

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That's another area where the UK is very strong as a cluster in South Wales and with big

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investment by Cardiff University for an Institute for Components Semiconductors company Ikee.

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Working with the university to fund a former compound semiconductor centre and 50 million

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of government funds invested to create his compound semiconductor applications catapult.

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And of course, all of this links to the quantum technologies I've been talking about health care, which is my area originally.

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Just amazing what's going on? So an example of a global collaboration is the human cell atlas.

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The ability to analyse individual cells in the human body to do whole genome analysis,

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look at the whole expression of the products of those genes proteins,

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understanding cells, organs, organisms in health and disease at a level that's never been possible before.

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And of course, you can study a hepatocytes liver cell in a normal person.

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You can study a hepatocyte in an alcoholic in a cirrhotic after a heavy meal.

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Cells, you can just study them in different physiological states in ways that would have been inconceivable before.

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And then, of course, that's coupled with the ability not only to analyse the genome, but to manipulate it.

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So gene editing, the power of synthetic biology, cryo electron microscopy to look at the molecules of life.

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A Nobel prise for Richard Henderson a couple of years ago at the Laboratory for Molecular Biology and, of course,

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another Nobel prise at Greg Winter a year later,

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also from the Laboratory Molecular Biology for his ability to understand and engineer antibody diversity.

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And of course, all of this at the end of the day is about people in health and disease.

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And that's where, again, technology lets you do things that weren't possible before.

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So I am one half millionth of the UK Biobank, so I volunteered to be a participant in the UK Biobank in about 2000 and five or six.

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I think maybe the third year that brings together half a million people, all volunteers aged between 40 and sixty nine point two entries.

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So I've given away my age and all half million of them, all of us are about to be sequence, coding and sequencing of half million people.

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In 2003, there was a great celebration of the first human genome had been sequenced.

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Who knows exactly what it was, course, but it was probably about a billion dollars.

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The idea that we were able to do half a million of them six years later was sort of unimaginable, really.

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I'm concerned about two minutes left. So and we're just about to move that up to five million people.

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These are extraordinary things, mobility, I've talked about the Faraday challenge, it's led to the creation of a Faraday institution.

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And of course, one of the things that industry want is scale up facilities.

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We're good at starting up, but we need to scale up before you can go into commercial production.

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And here we've created a scale up or creating a scale up facility for battery technologies agritech.

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One of the big problems for the world is feeding the planet sustainably in a way that doesn't destroy the environment.

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And of course, there you see a vertical farm. It's not very tall.

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But we now have the ability to grow foodstuffs hydroponically, so you don't have to worry about destroying soil.

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You can grow them vertically stacked so you can multiply the surface area.

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You can light them using LED lighting 24 hours a day, so you can almost effectively beat the efficiency of photosynthesis in aggregate.

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You can increase the carbon dioxide concentration a bit and you can control temperature,

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and suddenly you can revolutionise certainly the value of high of high value crops.

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You're not going to grow wheat this way. But the technology here and again, actually I was.

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The Oxford Farming Conference is a very well known farming conference that brings people together,

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and technology is something that is high in people's mind. Energy, energy, power underpins modern life.

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And so we have to be more efficient in our production of energy and our use of power.

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So I see that production of power and we're working on that.

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We've funded some energy demonstrators using intelligent local systems to deliver power to heat mobility one here in Oxford,

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but in Orkney, West Sussex. And I think it was a success.

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I think there's anyone in Oxford, and we should never forget the creative industries.

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That's something where the UK is very, very strong indeed. It's actually worth an enormous amount to the UK economy, over nearly 11 billion pounds.

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And the creative industries are being transformed by technology as well.

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In almost every imaginable way. And so the Arts and Humanities Research Council Creative Customs Programme is

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investing 80 million pounds in research and development partnerships across the UK.

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And there is actually an interesting question in how we measure R&D because there are.

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The UK has an R&D target to move. Our investment in R&D from 1.7 per cent roughly was just under 1.6 nine percent.

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Now I think of GDP in R&D up to two point four percent by 2027.

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But we are still, by OECD standards, a low invest in R&D as a proportion of GDP.

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But we get a lot for our money.

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And I think that we don't always identify where R&D is, and almost everything in the creative industries is actually R&D.

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It's in the word creation, public policy.

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I'm almost finished. She'll be pleased to hear.

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One of the things that there was a famous report by a chuckle Viscount Haldane in 1918, which established the modern machinery of government.

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But he said something very memorable in his report,

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which is that he thought the government would work better if it took more account of evidence that clearly has some resonance.

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And government has many important research and innovation questions on behalf of all of us as citizens.

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And one of the things that we're doing is working with government departments that each

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have now published areas of research interests that are published on government websites.

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And there are all sorts of questions where the research and innovation communities can help the delivery of public services,

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which have the possibility of being transformed by technology.

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I'll finish by just saying something about clusters because place and infrastructure is really important.

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And there are obviously places like Oxford which have enormous critical mass and enormous

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diversity of academic excellence and increasingly broad business growth as well.

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People function more easily in clusters. If you go to Kendall Square in Boston,

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then you will find that there are a cluster of biotech companies doing quite hot biotech where people can walk from one job to the next, as it were.

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And so that ability to cluster research and innovation is very important.

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And I think there are sort of four ingredients for customer success.

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So the first is you need a at least a small critical mass of industry.

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You need aligned academic strength. You need local support in the form of government.

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And the fourth and probably most important ingredient is actually leadership.

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But those are the conditions where you can grow modern high tech businesses.

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And when you actually map across the UK, what's the scale of the excellence varies in different parts of the country.

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There is very widely distributed excellence,

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and so we have a place based fund which is looking to find those places that have these full ingredients and provide some support for them as well.

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So challenges and opportunities. We have extraordinary research and innovation in the UK.

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There's an issue of knowledge diffusion. And I think this is a problem for every country,

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which is that the gap between the most productive companies and the least productive companies

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is very broad and the opportunity for technological diffusion is extremely important.

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I've talked about the issues of scaling up. We have got a very uneven economy in the UK, and that's not one that is sustainable in the long term.

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And I've said this already,

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we really have got to be leaders in enhancing and supporting equality diversity and make sure that the culture in which we work is a good one.

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Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Sir Mark, and also thank you for letting me know that I too will shortly be sequenced.

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Troublesome to our of our next speaker is Dr. Walt Copeland.

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He's undersecretary of commerce for standards and technology and this director, where he provides high level oversight and direction finest.

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Walt is a great friend of those of us who work in research, commercialisation apart from anything else.

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He's been there and he's done that himself, and he understands the art of the possible.

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And I think sometimes the art of the impossible team. He has a distinguished and very diverse career in science and technology.

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He's been executives in large and small corporations in US government, non-profits and other public sector settings.

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He's been a founder, a CEO and a president in an impressively large number of technology companies and has also served as managing director of tech,

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commercialisation and partnerships at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.

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He's developed and led a number of national programmes to support technology commercialisation and is spearheading a number of initiatives in the US,

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which I think he's going to share with us. Well, please come take Steve. Alison, thank you so much for your kind remarks.

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Phil, Tony, thank you for gathering us here together in in Oxford.

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I'm actually wearing a US UK pin.

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With all due respect to all of our international guests and participants as well, there's so much that we have to share.

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And I think bringing this community of practise together to look at how we drive innovation

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value from fundamental science and technology investment is absolutely critical.

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I'm delighted that Sir Mark began his remarks talking about the power of the atomic clock and how transformational that research has been.

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The latest generation of atomic clocks from this Boulder Laboratories have been recently published,

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and it's plus or minus one second in thirty three billion years.

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So prior to the onset of the known universe, we can now exquisitely understand time,

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which enables us not only to do the traditional things like advanced communication synchronisation of GPS,

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but also to understand fundamental properties of gravity and and so many other elements that are important to the future of innovation,

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technology transfer and innovation are interlinked.

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And with all due respect, the investment of however many pounds, dollars, yen,

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whatever it happens to be in fundamental research ultimately needs to be linked in a very purposeful way with the commercial marketplace,

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with entrepreneurship, with sources of capital, with the ability to lead corporations through uncertain times.

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And so I'll be describing for you today a little bit about the role that and I asked

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the National Institute of Standards and Technology plays in the United States.

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I'm delighted that we have a number of our partners here in the room, including Amex Day of Board Representative,

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a part of the Manufacturing USA Network, for which Nest has a coordinating oversight.

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The mission is really quite simple. We're part of the US Department of Commerce with the National Metrology Institute for the United States,

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so I just had the thrill of visiting with the eggs in Teddington here at the National Physical Laboratory, a sister agency of of of nest.

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This actually has a very broad remit in innovation and industrial competitiveness.

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And so as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce,

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we actually take a different lens on the R&D cycle because we focus on linking it actually with investment and with manufacturing integration.

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It's about having the ability to measure things with exquisite precision.

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And as Lord Kelvin famously said, not too far away from here.

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Worse, the effect of to measure is to know.

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And so our ability to understand and control at the fundamental level is absolutely critical to the scientific enterprise.

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But perhaps even as importantly, our engineering, our manufacturing enterprise as well.

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And so Nest has oversight for the advanced manufacturing national programmes in the United States of America,

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as well as oversight for technology transfer and innovation policy.

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So although we are fundamentally a non regulatory agency through the authorities vested in the Secretary of Commerce and then hence through to me,

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we have the oversight for the legislation in the United States.

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The By Dole Act, for example, which has been so critical to US innovation through the clarity of ownership of intellectual

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property rights for their deployment in the betterment of society through commercialisation.

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And in this sense, commercialisation is not a bad word, although it's often misunderstood.

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Just at a glance, this is an organisation that is about half and half of federal employees,

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as well as associates that include a large body of postdoctoral fellows, visiting scientists from corporations from academia.

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And this provides a unique sort of melting pot environment to to bring concepts from the laboratory

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into commercial reality or consider Industries National Laboratory in the United States.

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This is one of the reasons why we carry out this sort of unique role of bridging from foundational research into manufacturing implementation.

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We're home to five Nobel prises directly and have contributed to many, many more,

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and the majority of those are actually in the areas of quantum science and physics.

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At our two major campuses in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Boulder, Colorado.

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And in addition, Mist has close relationships with academia across the United States.

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There are 11 collaborative institutes and an equal number of centres of excellence across the United States,

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with America's leading universities to provide funding,

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but perhaps more importantly,

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access and sharing of knowledge and and the ability then to to move technology concepts into into commercial reality more effectively.

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In addition, along the bottom. Let's see if that actually actually works.

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So we coordinate a Manufacturing USA institute, so I'll describe those momentarily across every state of the Union in the United States.

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There are a series of manufacturing extension partnership programmes that represent support for small

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to medium sized enterprises and and also provide support for entrepreneurs and access to capital.

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And it's one of the powerful networks in the US that provides tremendous leverage for the US taxpayer.

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In addition to the Baldrige Performance Excellence programme is another public private partnership.

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I'll describe momentarily the priorities in the United States are not too dissimilar from those that we've heard about from Sir Mark today.

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The ones that missed addresses as a primary focus are looking to the future of structural biology and all elements of understanding,

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as well as control of biological systems, and then translating that into the manufacturing setting.

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The Internet of Things and Advanced Communications, including 5G artificial intelligence.

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I'm pleased to be one of the co-leads of the High Commission on Artificial Intelligence in the US,

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and it's an exciting time also to be a co-lead of the Quantum Initiative.

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The National Quantum Initiative, which has some similarities with the UK programme, part of the Quantum Science Programme at Nest,

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involves a quantum economic development consortium that's managed together with Stanford Research Institute on the West Coast.

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But it brings together 60 plus of the leading United States based and global multinationals focussed on implementation,

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early deployment of quantum based technologies.

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And one of the wonderful elements about this is that the early adoption opportunities are in the areas of measurement,

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science metrology, which brings nest in the United States to a very important role.

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In addition, our work in advanced manufacturing. I'll describe in in a moment in greater detail,

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but it's a focus of the United States policy and the industries of the future to create a stronger bedrock of connecting academia,

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the corporate sector and public private partnerships to advance advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity and privacy.

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Many of you may know about in this framework that's been used in cybersecurity around the world,

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and we're leading the development of a privacy framework that's not a regulatory focus.

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It really focuses on enabling innovation by embedding appropriate principles into a

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privacy framework and then disaster resilience as another area of great focus for next.

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Translating the knowledge of what happens in wind storms and fires and earthquakes volcanoes.

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I was just at the Volcano Observatory that's run with the U.S. Geological Survey in the Big Island off of Hawaii last week,

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and the atomic clocks are being used there now as part of measuring.

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Gravitational acceleration forces, and it's an exciting time in measurement science to to translate into very practical value,

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community resilience, building and infrastructure resilience.

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And so in addition to our traditional roles and documentary standards and measurement dissemination, technology transfer is a great focus.

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As Alison graciously introduced, this is a passion for me as well, but it's also part of my job.

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And so it's it's a great thing to see these things come together.

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I mentioned these public private partnerships briefly. The Manufacturing Extension Partnership is an interesting model.

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It ties in with the Small Business Innovation Research Programme of SBIR. You may have heard about that.

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It takes a portion of the direct federal appropriation for science and technology and applies it for collaborative research with with industry.

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The MEP focuses actually on tracking its impacts very, very closely because as we measure, we develop greater understanding and independent studies.

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Most recently have shown that for every one tax dollar that comes into this programme,

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fourteen point four tax dollars in personal income tax alone are directly attributed to this public private partnership.

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It's an interesting way of government to look at our own tax dollars out versus tax dollars back into the Treasury.

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So measuring those types of returns on investment as we look to the future are very,

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very important for the validation of of how government invests on behalf of its public.

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Manufacturing USA Institute. I'll describe those in greater detail.

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The Baldrige Performance Excellence programme is quite interesting.

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It was created some 30 plus years ago as as the United States was facing really a crisis of manufacturing quality.

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We were looking at Japan and Asian countries and their work in the automotive sector and saying, Hey,

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wait a minute, we need to to wake up to to celebrate and to stimulate quality in our organisations.

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And so the Baldrige Performance Excellence programme is another public private partnership under the wing of Niss,

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but it's managed with a private foundation, independent foundation.

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And so for government to work effectively with the private sector, having independent bodies is a very useful construct.

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And and so the Baldrige Foundation ultimately works with Nest in administering this highest level

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recognition for U.S. organisations and we ourselves at Nest in terms of the management practises,

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the best, best practises for leadership and strategy and human capital development utilise this framework as well.

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United States face the need for a national strategic plan around advanced manufacturing focussed on economic impacts, manufacturing employment.

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Looking at the fact that we have many dynamic areas,

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some of them were already mentioned this morning looking at Boston and Silicon Valley and Denver and Austin, Texas.

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Even places in the sort of unexpected parts of the United States are really building clusters of innovation that are attracting capital.

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And we're serial entrepreneurs find a whole because of the co-location that the ability to access the clusters.

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And so the Manufacturing USA institutes are certainly part of the national strategic plan in the United States for advanced manufacturing.

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And and the goal is, although we have seen ourselves initially as a source of so many innovations that

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could then be commercialised elsewhere as one makes one learns and it's it's very,

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very important to have that core manufacturing base in the industries of the future.

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This was outlined in the Strategic Plan for Advanced Manufacturing.

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The next led on behalf of the nation. It was a very, very close partnership with the manufacturing and the academic community as well.

398
00:45:18,250 --> 00:45:26,200
And the vision is is to ensure national security and economic prosperity through advanced manufacturing

399
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:33,820
leadership with a series of goals that include the development and transition of new manufacturing technologies.

400
00:45:33,820 --> 00:45:39,940
I invite you to review the strategy for American leadership in advanced manufacturing.

401
00:45:39,940 --> 00:45:47,780
I believe you'll find it instructive and perhaps some elements will be of value in the UK or in whichever country.

402
00:45:47,780 --> 00:45:53,330
You are from to educate, train and connect the manufacturing workforce.

403
00:45:53,330 --> 00:45:59,060
Again, this is an area where we see that the public private partnerships, the manufacturing institutes,

404
00:45:59,060 --> 00:46:06,650
as well as manufacturing extension partnership plays an important role of tying the laboratory to the marketplace.

405
00:46:06,650 --> 00:46:16,840
And then lastly, the objectives and priorities under expanding the capabilities of the domestic manufacturing supply chain.

406
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:25,870
Manufacturing USA is part of the solution, as I indicated, it's all about connecting people early stage ideas,

407
00:46:25,870 --> 00:46:39,700
but then resources and a shared portfolio of advanced manufacturing projects with a focus on industrial competitiveness that that the corporations,

408
00:46:39,700 --> 00:46:42,880
as well as the academic institutes who are part of these centres,

409
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:49,600
then can have access to facilities that no individual company would be able to build on its own.

410
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:53,590
Certainly for entrepreneurial business, having access to pilot plants,

411
00:46:53,590 --> 00:47:02,980
having the ability to validate technologies and scale up their systems provides de-risking in the eyes of the investor.

412
00:47:02,980 --> 00:47:08,950
And so the Manufacturing USA programme provides those elements as well.

413
00:47:08,950 --> 00:47:17,720
And it's all about taking our manufacturing readiness levels to to the to the right here to number 10.

414
00:47:17,720 --> 00:47:24,970
So it's not trial technology readiness levels because that does not define Mac manufacturability per se.

415
00:47:24,970 --> 00:47:28,870
And so this brings sort of a new lens,

416
00:47:28,870 --> 00:47:39,340
a new vision for translating technologies from the laboratory into the marketplace by demonstrating manufacturing capacity and capability.

417
00:47:39,340 --> 00:47:49,000
Because at the end of the day, investors, even early stage investors are going to require the validation of taking concepts through this gap

418
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:56,460
so that so that they can take it on effectively invest with the appropriate degree of confidence.

419
00:47:56,460 --> 00:48:03,880
As someone who's a former head of a venture fund and also who's who's led a

420
00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:11,470
series of companies from start up to public markets or to to acquisition exits,

421
00:48:11,470 --> 00:48:15,850
it's important to have that credibility of the technology.

422
00:48:15,850 --> 00:48:28,450
So the idea and the proof of concept, so much more of it is required to be advanced for the private sector with its own risk tolerance.

423
00:48:28,450 --> 00:48:36,070
We know that the government sponsors early stage technologies, which is by definition a high risk venture.

424
00:48:36,070 --> 00:48:40,000
But then in other elements, government is highly risk averse, right?

425
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:45,460
It's it's a unique dichotomy that we that we face.

426
00:48:45,460 --> 00:48:51,820
And so developing new tools, new approaches to bridge the gap, new concepts,

427
00:48:51,820 --> 00:49:02,950
constructs that enable management of conflict of interest and perception of conflict of interest is indeed a very important step.

428
00:49:02,950 --> 00:49:13,060
So let me point out Ms. Rd in Chicago and and the close collaboration with a series of universities in Northwestern being a key player.

429
00:49:13,060 --> 00:49:17,150
They are focussed on digital manufacturing. It went through a name change.

430
00:49:17,150 --> 00:49:21,010
It's quite interesting that its previous name, DMG,

431
00:49:21,010 --> 00:49:30,550
I was actually directly adopted by the Chinese Manufacturing Institute and indeed the US Advanced Manufacturing Strategic Plan.

432
00:49:30,550 --> 00:49:37,660
We found online the following day translated into Chinese, and it's fine.

433
00:49:37,660 --> 00:49:41,260
So this, you know, this is the world of open innovation, right?

434
00:49:41,260 --> 00:49:54,880
So we make it available to the world and we have to look at competing now in much more intelligent ways than in in previous times.

435
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:59,410
One of the other institutes that I'll just point out is called nimble.

436
00:49:59,410 --> 00:50:06,880
It's it's actually a unique location. It's it's built on a brownfield site.

437
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:12,940
It's the old Chrysler manufacturing plant for automobiles in Delaware.

438
00:50:12,940 --> 00:50:27,010
It's it's a bit of a metaphor like a phoenix has arisen out of the ashes of the old line industry 3.0 regime,

439
00:50:27,010 --> 00:50:31,870
and now we have the National Institute for Innovation in Biopharmaceuticals,

440
00:50:31,870 --> 00:50:39,700
a strong public private partnership bringing the world's leading biopharma manufacturers together with the entrepreneurs,

441
00:50:39,700 --> 00:50:48,280
together with academia, together with the federal sector and a very unique model for for leverage.

442
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:54,700
Once again, it's creating an environment for innovation as it's creating connexions between people,

443
00:50:54,700 --> 00:51:02,680
early stage companies, strategic corporate investors, the larger players who are part of the the institute.

444
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:09,190
And I visited quite a few of these institutes already in my time as undersecretary of commerce,

445
00:51:09,190 --> 00:51:16,100
and I must say that they are transformational because communities that were once seen as.

446
00:51:16,100 --> 00:51:25,610
As derelict or old line manufacturing sectors have moved away because new technologies have come in or have been offshored,

447
00:51:25,610 --> 00:51:30,980
it creates now that vitality of of rebuilding workforce,

448
00:51:30,980 --> 00:51:40,700
of of driving entrepreneurship into the economy and creating access to seed and expansion capital.

449
00:51:40,700 --> 00:51:52,190
So I talked before about part of my job and innovation, and I use the term return on investment in another context already.

450
00:51:52,190 --> 00:51:58,550
My boss, Wilbur Ross is is also a person who's had a long career in investment.

451
00:51:58,550 --> 00:52:02,330
And he resonated when he and I first met.

452
00:52:02,330 --> 00:52:13,880
Just talking about the concept of ROIC in federally funded research and innovation and taking the broadest possible definition of return.

453
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:20,040
We're not just talking about financial returns or economic returns, but we're talking about returns to society.

454
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:28,130
We're talking about returns to our people. And so it's important for us to consider the social dimensions.

455
00:52:28,130 --> 00:52:34,760
I love the fact that Sir Mark used the term steam with regard to the the previous industrial revolution,

456
00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:43,130
as well as to its importance in science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics today.

457
00:52:43,130 --> 00:52:48,590
Our goal in the United States is to continue to innovate how we innovate,

458
00:52:48,590 --> 00:52:54,800
and we've seen that that there's been great power in the previous policy construct.

459
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:58,190
The By Dole Act has been very, very important for us,

460
00:52:58,190 --> 00:53:09,680
but the federally funded research in our national laboratories or federal laboratory complex has not been as productive,

461
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:20,480
if you will, because of some of the challenges that are just in place due to policy and and the regulatory as well as legislative constructs.

462
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:25,520
Our goal, together with the White House, with the Office of Science and Technology Policy,

463
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:32,360
is to address some of the root cause challenges for for slowing down innovation

464
00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:38,450
in certain key sectors and to modernise our system for the 21st century,

465
00:53:38,450 --> 00:53:46,490
to take to take the long view and and to address some of the challenges, including regulatory burdens,

466
00:53:46,490 --> 00:53:52,370
some of the structural challenges and in many cases, it's all leadership and culture issue.

467
00:53:52,370 --> 00:53:59,450
And so I'm in the midst of transforming my organisation of the National Institute of Standards and Technology with a new

468
00:53:59,450 --> 00:54:09,680
structure to bring a long term focus on these challenges and the role of technology transfer and innovation is actually part

469
00:54:09,680 --> 00:54:18,680
of the job description of the scientific leadership as well of the organisation to reinforce the fact that how we measure

470
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:27,920
our scientists performance is not just on the factors of their of their papers and the number of scientific publications,

471
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:35,870
but we actually look at the impact of the work that we that they do in impacting society positively.

472
00:54:35,870 --> 00:54:41,450
So the U.S. invests around one hundred and fifty billion dollars per year in R&D.

473
00:54:41,450 --> 00:54:46,070
About one third of that is at the three 000 plus federal laboratories.

474
00:54:46,070 --> 00:54:51,920
This is the host institution for the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer,

475
00:54:51,920 --> 00:54:59,240
and we report annually to Congress and to the president on how we're doing as a nation and technology transfer.

476
00:54:59,240 --> 00:55:08,390
Two thirds of that is extramural research, primarily at universities and collaborations with R&D institutes and with industry.

477
00:55:08,390 --> 00:55:17,960
And our goal is to have a much more purposeful connexion on the innovation cycle with this research that creates the seed corn for the industries,

478
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:24,000
for the opportunities of the future. We certainly have come a long way over over the past decades.

479
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:29,450
1980 was when the Stevenson, Weidler and the biofuel acts actually were written into law.

480
00:55:29,450 --> 00:55:37,430
And we see, however, that our our networks are absolutely critical to create high,

481
00:55:37,430 --> 00:55:43,730
high fidelity connexions between the government, between our universities,

482
00:55:43,730 --> 00:55:49,520
between our federal labs, our research organisations, entrepreneurs, investors,

483
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:55,730
including strategic investors as well, who will do some of the larger deals.

484
00:55:55,730 --> 00:56:04,520
We also need to look at new models for how early stage and and venture capital investment is managed in the future.

485
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:09,620
And so looking at these networks provide access to resources and talent on a shared basis.

486
00:56:09,620 --> 00:56:20,590
It's important. The Lab to Market Initiative, I co-lead with Michael Kratsios, who's the deputy assistant to the president for technology policy,

487
00:56:20,590 --> 00:56:24,980
and it brings together all the science and technology agencies in the US.

488
00:56:24,980 --> 00:56:33,640
You know, actually a very close partnership, despite what one reads about fractured politics and and polarisation, et cetera.

489
00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:42,970
I must say that the science and technology complex in the US has been working in a very close, harmonious and coordinated way.

490
00:56:42,970 --> 00:56:53,290
And and I'm delighted that that we see the need for continuing to move the needle on innovation for the United States forward.

491
00:56:53,290 --> 00:56:58,840
We took a lot of time over the last year to listen to stakeholders across the United States,

492
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:10,210
as well as to benchmark globally, and the results of the input request for information is public.

493
00:57:10,210 --> 00:57:20,620
It's on the Nest website, and the summary report of the national conversation is also available in an analysis report

494
00:57:20,620 --> 00:57:27,250
that Nest has issued that we call our return on investment initiative the Green Paper.

495
00:57:27,250 --> 00:57:34,510
It's this special publication one two three four easy to remember, easy to find on on our website.

496
00:57:34,510 --> 00:57:42,850
But the idea here is to have five overarching strategies and five key findings, as well as other opportunities for changing policy,

497
00:57:42,850 --> 00:57:53,080
including tax policy to incentivise innovation at the interface between the universities and an industry to invest in early stage,

498
00:57:53,080 --> 00:58:00,250
higher risk enterprises. And and the findings are in in these five categories.

499
00:58:00,250 --> 00:58:08,800
Identify the regulatory impediments, as well as the administrative improvements that we can implement in federal tech transfer policies in practise.

500
00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:12,160
Recognising that this is the driver for innovation.

501
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:24,910
It's not just about random diffusion of knowledge, but this is focussed directed movement of technology from the laboratory to the market,

502
00:58:24,910 --> 00:58:34,570
increased engagement between the private sector investors and the public sector research and development community.

503
00:58:34,570 --> 00:58:43,480
Investing in building a more entrepreneurial R&D workforce. Learning from one another as we are at fora such as we experienced today,

504
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:49,660
supporting innovative tools and services for technology transfer, making them easy to find making deals easy to do.

505
00:58:49,660 --> 00:58:57,490
New agile approaches to entering consortia, collaborations, public private partnerships and.

506
00:58:57,490 --> 00:59:05,470
And in many ways, since the applications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence to help people find cluster,

507
00:59:05,470 --> 00:59:11,170
utilise technologies and build upon them for the enterprises of the future.

508
00:59:11,170 --> 00:59:17,530
So tech transfer is something it's a term that's actually misunderstood by so many.

509
00:59:17,530 --> 00:59:22,760
When I'm in the US and I talk about technology transfer and I'm speaking to somebody in the trade area.

510
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:28,270
They're thinking about sort of forced technology transfer and compulsory licences.

511
00:59:28,270 --> 00:59:36,880
And as a result of trade deals that all of a sudden the technology rights are exhausted in the host country and given to the recipient country.

512
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:45,910
So in some ways, we have to find the right kind of language to describe what it is that innovation professionals do.

513
00:59:45,910 --> 00:59:53,530
But at the end of the day, it's looking broadly fulfilling the public and the private need driving innovation,

514
00:59:53,530 --> 01:00:00,400
economic value through all the tools, the resources that are available to us in the 21st century.

515
01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:04,570
I look forward to our conversation with you today. Here's my contact detail.

516
01:00:04,570 --> 01:00:17,200
Walter Kopen at Niseko and thank you again for your attention, and I look forward to our discussion again.

517
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:23,880
Thanks. Do you want to have the middle seat? I'm on the middle again.

518
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:33,150
Yeah, thank you. Well, thank you very much for that. Really, really appreciate your talk and just the the breadth and range.

519
01:00:33,150 --> 01:00:40,980
And it's it's very clear that there are a number of common themes there, just in terms of elements like clustering,

520
01:00:40,980 --> 01:00:47,130
the importance of place, the sense of the different kinds of initiatives to get industry to engage.

521
01:00:47,130 --> 01:00:55,950
So we're going to now move into a short Q&A session and I'm going to join the boys on the committee chairs.

522
01:00:55,950 --> 01:01:06,720
Indeed. Yeah. So I think we are going to open it up to the audience, but I guess to to kick off one,

523
01:01:06,720 --> 01:01:12,300
there's a question from me and I think Mark called it the knowledge diffusion,

524
01:01:12,300 --> 01:01:18,660
saying, you know, terrific at engaging many companies, but yet there were more to engage in.

525
01:01:18,660 --> 01:01:26,640
I know this is something that we often battle with in Ireland. I mean, about half of our audience, something does actually come from businesses,

526
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:30,300
but that's still not enough and it's still not enough of the companies involved.

527
01:01:30,300 --> 01:01:40,050
I'm just interested with the the variety of mechanisms and the strategic planning that's going on around this in both the U.K. and the USA.

528
01:01:40,050 --> 01:01:44,580
What more could we be doing or what more could industry be doing to really

529
01:01:44,580 --> 01:01:49,230
target those companies who don't yet really engage with the research system,

530
01:01:49,230 --> 01:01:56,250
but for whom such engagement would really lead to good innovation? I'm OK.

531
01:01:56,250 --> 01:01:58,920
So, I mean, I think one's going to break the problem down a bit,

532
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:03,570
so there's a diffusion from the bleeding edge to the leading edge, and that sort of happens,

533
01:02:03,570 --> 01:02:11,580
all right, because these are the very high tech universities companies, but it's actually getting from the leading to the sort of medium.

534
01:02:11,580 --> 01:02:15,150
And then the trailing edge is a real issue.

535
01:02:15,150 --> 01:02:24,450
So I mean, there's no single magic bullet points that companies building capacity through their supply chain is really important.

536
01:02:24,450 --> 01:02:26,010
And so companies themselves,

537
01:02:26,010 --> 01:02:34,650
the big companies play an enormously important role in technology diffusion because actually they help their supply chain if they're sensible.

538
01:02:34,650 --> 01:02:42,000
And actually, I think there is something important at the moment with increasing industrial digitisation about building standards as well,

539
01:02:42,000 --> 01:02:42,600
because actually,

540
01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:49,650
if you're a big company in principle, you can have your widget digitally specified and built by a company anywhere in the world, potentially.

541
01:02:49,650 --> 01:02:54,360
And we'll see much more micro in local manufacturing in the UK.

542
01:02:54,360 --> 01:02:59,910
We've got the catapult network. And that's an important part of their job.

543
01:02:59,910 --> 01:03:05,550
But if you talk to businesses and I think one of the big challenges at the moment is in this digital world,

544
01:03:05,550 --> 01:03:14,940
there are all sorts of people trying to sell technological solutions to small companies, and it's very difficult for them to be good customers.

545
01:03:14,940 --> 01:03:21,600
And I think we all recognise that in our everyday lives, we've been flooded with offers for technology that will make our homes smarter.

546
01:03:21,600 --> 01:03:25,950
It's people we want to be smarter than homes, but then we leave that site,

547
01:03:25,950 --> 01:03:35,490
and the message that comes across from several sectors is that the people of the sort of small businesses that are perhaps at the trailing edge,

548
01:03:35,490 --> 01:03:44,260
they value peer. Technology transfer, in other words, they will believe people who are in the same places then who have been customers,

549
01:03:44,260 --> 01:03:49,720
and it's how do you turn people into good customers? That's the big challenge with diffusion.

550
01:03:49,720 --> 01:03:55,450
And I think it's it's about how you engage peer networks that's going to be really important, wolf.

551
01:03:55,450 --> 01:03:58,840
Yeah, I think those are those are marvellous points.

552
01:03:58,840 --> 01:04:08,800
And to the discussion around standardisation for entrepreneurial ventures as well as for existing companies,

553
01:04:08,800 --> 01:04:15,340
it's absolutely imperative to have standards to provide credibility for new products,

554
01:04:15,340 --> 01:04:21,700
for market adoption and and for entry into a trusted supply chain.

555
01:04:21,700 --> 01:04:33,280
We're facing, I think, a resurgence of of focus in the United States around manufacturing and supply chain integrity.

556
01:04:33,280 --> 01:04:39,040
And what this means is that we need to provide more opportunities for engagement.

557
01:04:39,040 --> 01:04:48,040
I use the term network development and cluster engagement several times in my discussion today.

558
01:04:48,040 --> 01:04:54,550
And so providing these abilities for organisations to meet with one another to make it easy

559
01:04:54,550 --> 01:05:02,380
to find technologies and expertise in a way that's credible and validated is is so important.

560
01:05:02,380 --> 01:05:11,950
And then I mentioned also the of the need to incentivise, in some ways, industry to come back to the interface.

561
01:05:11,950 --> 01:05:20,650
Many of the corporations in the US, the UK and other nations are global players and we'll have global R&D centres and they will shop their

562
01:05:20,650 --> 01:05:29,440
technology projects and their development projects to where they believe the best available resources are.

563
01:05:29,440 --> 01:05:40,450
And so I think it's imperative for corporations to look globally at at their resource base, but also to be re incentivised, if you will,

564
01:05:40,450 --> 01:05:50,380
to come back to their home markets to look at the UK based opportunities to look at the US based opportunities in a fresh way as we reposition,

565
01:05:50,380 --> 01:05:55,150
in many cases, the opportunities for entrepreneurship.

566
01:05:55,150 --> 01:06:01,810
Connexion with the capital community. And then also for the corporate strategic investor,

567
01:06:01,810 --> 01:06:12,730
as well as for the larger R&D based corporations to access the technologies through public private partnership came over to the audience now,

568
01:06:12,730 --> 01:06:17,380
and I have to tell you, we have a few beaming lights here and I don't quite see you.

569
01:06:17,380 --> 01:06:21,520
If you'd like to talk to you, can you wave you have a question vigorously?

570
01:06:21,520 --> 01:06:27,400
Yes. Sorry. Alice Frost from Research England,

571
01:06:27,400 --> 01:06:34,090
I want to ask about place because we are about to publish some papers from Cambridge University and one from Philip McCann at

572
01:06:34,090 --> 01:06:44,620
Sheffield University described the UK as like the inequalities of the eurozone in the space of Wyoming in terms of its extremes.

573
01:06:44,620 --> 01:06:48,520
And if you look at the map of America, a something like the distribution of venture capital.

574
01:06:48,520 --> 01:06:55,060
What you find is actually an increasing concentration in the East and West Coast, with the flyover states having very little.

575
01:06:55,060 --> 01:07:03,400
I just wonder, do we need a next? Do we need another generation of policies to address these kind of inequalities

576
01:07:03,400 --> 01:07:08,770
in if we're going to accept a world of entrepreneurship and capitalism,

577
01:07:08,770 --> 01:07:15,420
are we going to have to think of a whole new set of techniques to address what seems to be inequalities that are growing, not reducing?

578
01:07:15,420 --> 01:07:26,740
Yeah. I also think that's a wonderful question. And in in the US, this certainly is an area of great focus because the white space between the coasts,

579
01:07:26,740 --> 01:07:33,160
as well as the concentration areas for venture and for innovation,

580
01:07:33,160 --> 01:07:41,950
permit great opportunities for the research universities and for cluster development, as well as for the use of the power of the network.

581
01:07:41,950 --> 01:07:48,790
So, for example, the New York Caressa and Silicon Valley Koretz, who in terms of early stage investment,

582
01:07:48,790 --> 01:07:53,230
actually are now increasingly working together to look at deal flow from across the nation.

583
01:07:53,230 --> 01:08:02,020
And so as that network of early stage investors, as well as the the seed stage investors become more sophisticated.

584
01:08:02,020 --> 01:08:07,120
That in itself creates those greater opportunities for growth.

585
01:08:07,120 --> 01:08:13,720
So I think we're going to see a confluence and a necessary confluence of both a policy push

586
01:08:13,720 --> 01:08:22,300
to create this as a national opportunity in the US that includes within Wyoming itself.

587
01:08:22,300 --> 01:08:33,820
But but also, I believe in many countries, these same types of issues have arisen as a real pleasure for me to be in Youngstown, Ohio, where we are.

588
01:08:33,820 --> 01:08:44,410
The America Make Centre, which focuses on additive manufacturing and so on, has been revitalising this old steel town.

589
01:08:44,410 --> 01:08:54,460
And it's it's a thrill to see these clusters, even though it's not even on the map of venture investment yet in the United States.

590
01:08:54,460 --> 01:08:58,480
But the number of companies that are created and the amount of capital sources that

591
01:08:58,480 --> 01:09:03,820
are coming together from a diffused source are now becoming increasingly available.

592
01:09:03,820 --> 01:09:10,210
So I believe we're going to have to use all the instruments available to encourage those types of developments.

593
01:09:10,210 --> 01:09:16,990
So I think you have to look at place through the lens of people. And so what makes a good place for people?

594
01:09:16,990 --> 01:09:22,690
It's where you can live, work and play. And so we actually have an advantage in that.

595
01:09:22,690 --> 01:09:26,260
We're rather a small country geographically.

596
01:09:26,260 --> 01:09:37,120
And so it's partly about the physical cluster, but it's also partly about enlarging the physical cluster effectively by good transport, for example.

597
01:09:37,120 --> 01:09:45,010
And so if you can move around easily and of course, transport works in two ways it's moving people around, but it's also moving work around.

598
01:09:45,010 --> 01:09:49,690
And so increasingly, people are going to be able to do things remotely.

599
01:09:49,690 --> 01:09:58,330
And so I think as we're looking through simply the policy of the concentration of things in a physical space is only part of the issue.

600
01:09:58,330 --> 01:10:06,790
It's how you make that concentration more available. And if you just put the UK on the map of the United States,

601
01:10:06,790 --> 01:10:12,370
we are on quite a small place overall and so we ought to be able to do much better than we are.

602
01:10:12,370 --> 01:10:19,870
And I must say, when Andrew Witty did his work in about 2013 commissioned by the government to look at strengths around the UK,

603
01:10:19,870 --> 01:10:25,090
you will find that there is serious excellence in many, many parts of the country.

604
01:10:25,090 --> 01:10:31,000
So if you look across the south of Scotland, for example, you'll find this amazing photonics cluster.

605
01:10:31,000 --> 01:10:35,800
You find gaming around Dundee and Abertay.

606
01:10:35,800 --> 01:10:43,030
You look at the Northeast and you find renewable energy. You start mapping out the country and you find actually,

607
01:10:43,030 --> 01:10:50,050
we are in a very good position to have very advanced technological clusters right across the UK.

608
01:10:50,050 --> 01:10:57,490
And I think that's the challenge. And it's not about Plonking and Nanotechnology Institute in every coastal city of the UK.

609
01:10:57,490 --> 01:11:06,330
That's not the right answer. It is about building on strengths. You have to have a bit of kindling in order to actually get the cluster to grow.

610
01:11:06,330 --> 01:11:13,570
But I think one just got to look at it. I think if you look at it through the lens, people work out what makes people want to be in a place.

611
01:11:13,570 --> 01:11:20,590
And it's actually, again, my culture is simple. What makes a place attractive to live is where you can play.

612
01:11:20,590 --> 01:11:23,750
So it's an interesting problem. And the.

613
01:11:23,750 --> 01:11:30,950
The idea of designing strategy on Play Right film will probably kill me, so I'm going to be a bit bold,

614
01:11:30,950 --> 01:11:35,450
but I think it would be if we just didn't at least reach four for one more

615
01:11:35,450 --> 01:11:40,580
question from the audience and risk of running a little over here on the left.

616
01:11:40,580 --> 01:11:46,400
Yeah. Thanks, Alison. Leonard Hobson from Trinity College Dublin. You both mentioned steam in your conversations.

617
01:11:46,400 --> 01:11:48,860
Come up there again about culture, which is very interesting because I for me,

618
01:11:48,860 --> 01:11:54,920
I think a lot of the future is about creativity, supports innovation and creativity and innovation.

619
01:11:54,920 --> 01:11:58,100
However, engaging industry with the arts was like the arts,

620
01:11:58,100 --> 01:12:05,510
and the creative side of universities is an even tougher challenge than trying to get industry to engage with, say, the STEM and the technology side.

621
01:12:05,510 --> 01:12:11,270
So what? What advice or how would you see? How do you crack that particular chestnut to get the traditional, say,

622
01:12:11,270 --> 01:12:18,470
the tech industries of the bio industries to engage in the creative side of universities?

623
01:12:18,470 --> 01:12:25,430
I think to the to the point that was made about about work, live, play,

624
01:12:25,430 --> 01:12:36,380
the the arts are and the humanities more broadly are, I believe, an underutilised resource for innovation in itself.

625
01:12:36,380 --> 01:12:44,300
But there are also a tremendous resource for corporations and in terms of the quality of life for their people,

626
01:12:44,300 --> 01:12:55,400
wherever they happen to be living, as well as in many cases, areas for for innovation and and investment.

627
01:12:55,400 --> 01:13:03,110
I've seen many of the arts incubators and and new start-ups across the United States,

628
01:13:03,110 --> 01:13:07,430
and it's not the traditional corporations that are going to be investing in them,

629
01:13:07,430 --> 01:13:15,410
but they're very interested in the outputs for the quality of life of their people and for the vibrancy of their communities.

630
01:13:15,410 --> 01:13:21,320
Yes, I'm not convinced that it is that difficult to engage. Look, who made Apple all their money?

631
01:13:21,320 --> 01:13:29,660
Actually, Jonathan Ive from the University of Northumbria with a design background who took their technology and humanised it.

632
01:13:29,660 --> 01:13:34,760
And I think the great opportunity now is about humanising technologies,

633
01:13:34,760 --> 01:13:41,180
about making it attractive and easy to use, particularly with the demographic transitions we're going through.

634
01:13:41,180 --> 01:13:46,100
And I think you see lots of examples of where, for example, at Imperial College,

635
01:13:46,100 --> 01:13:51,890
the partnership between the engineering and the Royal College of Art around the corner, we're seeing this increasingly.

636
01:13:51,890 --> 01:14:00,050
I mean, I think the you get Google DeepMind, what makes their interfaces powerful is that they actually have psychologists.

637
01:14:00,050 --> 01:14:03,620
They have designers making it. It's an effective interface.

638
01:14:03,620 --> 01:14:12,980
And so I think that the big, if successful and indeed some of the small, successful, innovative companies have really got it.

639
01:14:12,980 --> 01:14:23,270
Look at the company improbable, which is a UK, one of the many UK unicorns that was a company that started as a gaming company, so computer games.

640
01:14:23,270 --> 01:14:31,220
But it realised that the worlds, the virtual worlds it was modelling and creating could be the real worlds that it could model.

641
01:14:31,220 --> 01:14:35,840
And of course, one of the great opportunities which we haven't really talked about is a digital twinning.

642
01:14:35,840 --> 01:14:43,100
So we thought a fair bit about A.I., but the extraordinary opportunity of a digital twinning to model products,

643
01:14:43,100 --> 01:14:48,890
processes and reduce the R&D costs, all of this depends on the creative industries.

644
01:14:48,890 --> 01:14:54,400
And so I think that the door is wide open, actually.

645
01:14:54,400 --> 01:15:01,850
I was particularly struck by that our Institute for Manufacturing Research in Dublin actually has a couple of psychologists embedded,

646
01:15:01,850 --> 01:15:07,060
very focussed that you were talking about. So psychologically, I may be a little under pressure.

647
01:15:07,060 --> 01:15:11,620
I'm looking at Phil. Would you like which to draw to a close relative? One more question.

648
01:15:11,620 --> 01:15:18,820
One more question. Thank you. References. Jeremy Long from the Oxigeno Local Enterprise Partnership.

649
01:15:18,820 --> 01:15:25,960
I think there's been some fascinating remarks made about place, but I'm going to go on digging a little more in the time we have,

650
01:15:25,960 --> 01:15:32,860
because in what you've talked about, you've mentioned global R&D centres, technology diffusion.

651
01:15:32,860 --> 01:15:42,430
I mean, who do you believe in? A UK context should own the thinking about place and trying to take it forward.

652
01:15:42,430 --> 01:15:52,030
Because when you talk about live, work and play, those touch upon so many different political organisations, local organisations,

653
01:15:52,030 --> 01:16:01,640
all of whom aren't particularly well joined up in making the very best out of the place that any of us try and live and work and play in.

654
01:16:01,640 --> 01:16:08,810
Since you mentioned you came about stuff, and I think the idea that there should be a single owner is probably wrong,

655
01:16:08,810 --> 01:16:14,660
but I think if you look at the sort of political trends in recent years,

656
01:16:14,660 --> 01:16:21,740
there is obviously a big focus on place in government for very obvious reasons because of course, place goes with votes as well.

657
01:16:21,740 --> 01:16:27,320
But you see the rise of mayors probably slower than the United States,

658
01:16:27,320 --> 01:16:34,010
but you see the power of what's happened in Manchester with the sort of combination of had been seen as a leader.

659
01:16:34,010 --> 01:16:39,290
Richard Lees, you see what's happened with mayors around the country?

660
01:16:39,290 --> 01:16:43,610
Ultimately, if you want a place to work, it's going to be the places themselves where the leadership is.

661
01:16:43,610 --> 01:16:51,440
And so I think you need national support. You obviously need to connect to create the national network of transport links places together.

662
01:16:51,440 --> 01:16:56,030
But then you have to have the sort of local networks of transport as well.

663
01:16:56,030 --> 01:17:01,640
That means, for example, that East Anglia is connected to Cambridge, that Cambridge is connected to Oxford.

664
01:17:01,640 --> 01:17:11,570
And you can see much more conversation about this than you did before. You can see the conversation amendment about the railway across the north.

665
01:17:11,570 --> 01:17:17,120
So Place doesn't reside in any one area. And of course, none of this is new.

666
01:17:17,120 --> 01:17:22,880
You go back to people like Patrick Geddes and his work at the end of the 19th century,

667
01:17:22,880 --> 01:17:30,860
Jane Jacobs in the United States, who did these amazing studies of the death and birth of the Great American city.

668
01:17:30,860 --> 01:17:37,280
So I think responsibility placed lies ultimately in places with citizens, with communities.

669
01:17:37,280 --> 01:17:43,240
But it has to be the national government has to provide a facilitated framework.

670
01:17:43,240 --> 01:17:50,090
Well, yeah, the the challenges are, of course, are in every place indeed.

671
01:17:50,090 --> 01:18:00,740
And so the concept of regional identity, but also a degree of regional and local ownership is absolutely essential.

672
01:18:00,740 --> 01:18:06,500
I mentioned the manufacturing extension partnerships as one of the important tools for innovation.

673
01:18:06,500 --> 01:18:10,520
And it's actually the states and the local regions that are actually the key investors there.

674
01:18:10,520 --> 01:18:16,820
It's not from the federal side because they care about their local place from the federal side.

675
01:18:16,820 --> 01:18:26,750
I mean, quite clearly, there's a goal to enhance quality of life and economic vitality and so on across the entire nation.

676
01:18:26,750 --> 01:18:38,510
But but there are unique requirements in many cases, their unique relationship that need to be built or in some cases rebuilt,

677
01:18:38,510 --> 01:18:46,700
where there may be differences in socio economic or political outlook within a very localised area.

678
01:18:46,700 --> 01:18:58,760
And so creating a coalition that overcomes those types of local or personal interests for the regional good is is essential.

679
01:18:58,760 --> 01:19:08,900
While I was in New York, we created a regional cluster that we called Accelerate Long Island that actually brought

680
01:19:08,900 --> 01:19:14,810
together all the political districts and all the economic districts around a common umbrella.

681
01:19:14,810 --> 01:19:29,980
The state of New York was convinced at that time to allocate a portion of the Public Employees Pension Fund to invest in local businesses.

682
01:19:29,980 --> 01:19:35,090
And that was such a successful programme because it resulted not only in job creation,

683
01:19:35,090 --> 01:19:44,660
but also retention within the region that that the local power then has the ability to cascade much more broadly.

684
01:19:44,660 --> 01:19:51,650
But coalition building and and creating a sense of harmony and an understanding of the resources that are

685
01:19:51,650 --> 01:19:58,700
available within the place that the community wishes to build upon is an absolutely essential series of steps.

686
01:19:58,700 --> 01:20:04,340
Thank you. I'm sure we could probably be here talking for an awful lot longer, but I think I get shot in the work.

687
01:20:04,340 --> 01:20:11,584
Thank you so much. A terrific start to the event.