I have just signed up for the Facebook DIUS (the bizarre sounding Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills , (you will innovate or else!)) consultation website. I hope I do a bit better than last time when the consultation EMail address closed before the actual deadline and my submission was lost. To make sure my submission is not entirely wasted I will put some of it here....
• How do we create opportunities and manage the threat from emerging economies to capture the emerging markets?
There are no customs barriers to invention and though knowledge can be kept secret or protected by patents this only really works for pharmaceuticals or materials. Whole businesses which we might imagine have to be Europe based could move to Asia and even to South America.
I believe we still have an advantage in computer communications, time-zone position and literacy but this is not unassailable. One area where we are falling behind is the literacy, numeracy and mathematical ability of British science and engineering graduates. The universities are forced by financial considerations to rate student recruitment and progression as more important than requiring basic competence in these areas at the end of 1st year undergraduate courses. This is not the case, for example, in the elite institutions in India, China, Russia and probably also South America. It could be predicted that British companies will require to recruit development scientists from abroad in order to be able to complete design processes because British graduates have not acquired the necessary skills for the problem in hand.
This implies it will be necessary to involve the emerging economies as full development partners to get a good coverage of science skills and available labour. Britain is imagined to excel at “soft skills”. This is not something that should be relied on.
Because the numeracy problem is less acute in other countries, actual high end design might move abroad leaving the UK only providing capital for product development, a vulnerable situation.
