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Lord Sainsbury of TurvilleFaraday Partnerships Directors' Conference |
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Delighted to be here. This is the first occasion when representatives of the complete network of 24 Partnerships have gathered together; a special welcome to the 6 newest Partnerships from the 4th call. Not going to speak for long: thought you would prefer to ask questions and engage in discussion. WHY ARE FARADAY PARTNERSHIPS IMPORTANT? The Government believes that universities are at the centre of the knowledge economy, and that the world class quality of our science and engineering base is a major national asset. It is, therefore, committed both to funding properly the science and engineering base so that we can maintain our record of success in basic science, and in providing the mechanisms and incentives to enable us to take advantage of it to create wealth and improve the quality of our lives. In 1997/98 the Science Budget was £1.3billion and in this year's Comprehensive Spending Review the Science Budget will grow by an average of 10% a year in real terms and will reach £2.9billion by 2005/6. We want to attract and retain high quality people and ensure that the UK science base matches world class standards and is properly equipped to carry out 21st century research. We have introduced the Higher Education Innovation Fund to give HEIs an identifiable third stream of funding to support their work with business and the wider community. We have introduced the idea of widespread training in entrepreneurship for undergraduates in science and technology to give them confidence to get into spin-outs and start-ups. And we have introduced new instruments to promote the availability of venture capital in universities and in the regions. The recent HEI/Business Interaction survey showed that:
Coupled with the incentives for business such as tax credits for R&D and the shortened taper on capital gains tax, I believe we are making steady progress in creating the right environment which encourages innovation. Faraday Partnerships are a central part of our plans, bringing together all the ways of promoting innovation together under a single banner so as to achieve the maximum impact. And I think that they have caught people's imagination. We have now run four calls for proposals which have netted about 260 outline bids. A typical bid can include a mix of around a dozen universities, two or three intermediary organisations and perhaps 30 interested firms. So in total, well over 10,000 people in many organisations have now been actively canvassed about the Faraday initiative, and have said "yes", they want to be involved in capturing the benefits of our world-class record of discovery in order to improve wealth creation and improvements in the quality of our lives. MAKING THEM WORK Having said that, I don't think any of us – sponsors, core partners or simply participants – in the Faraday initiative are under any illusions about the difficulties. You are trying to operate on many fronts at once: building research portfolios; finding research students; keeping your partners involved; understanding all the schemes that you could use; including firms in new activities; keeping track of IPR; employing technology translators; running events and making sure that projects deliver positive outcomes in firms. And amongst all that, we expect you to achieve targets and performance measures; and fill in your DTI claims! But we would not be asking you to do this – and I suspect that you would not want to do it – if we did not collectively believe that there are real prizes to be won:
I think that this is a really exciting agenda. And I hope that you are equally excited by the opportunities that the Faraday Partnership initiative offers for your sectors. At this conference last year you were challenged to come with ideas for ITS missions. We have had about 10 that are now being worked up, including two on advanced packaging and others in electronics, mechatronics and land remediation. I know there is plenty of scope for more.And again last year you heard about initial negotiations with the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft to strengthen the links between Faraday Partnerships and the FhG. Those links have blossomed with the positioning of a key member of the FhG team into the PRIME Faraday and I hope that links will quickly spread into other Partnerships where there are obvious synergies with their Fraunhofer counterpart. There are many other examples of good practice and success that I cannot mention in detail. Just 3 include:
All this is excellent. But if we are to be really successful, every Faraday has to perform at these high levels day in, day out – year in, year out. But I will say that if you fulfil the promise, we in Government will continue to help you. THANKS In a few moments, I want to hear your views about the way Faraday Partnerships are shaping up. In particular:
But before that, I just want to say a few "thank yous". Firstly, to all of you for having the courage to get involved. Nobody had run a Faraday Partnership before 1998; we have all had to learn from scratch. And we are still learning. I do not underestimate for one moment the difficulties you have had to face and the amount of effort that has gone in to getting this far. But I genuinely believe that Faraday Partnerships can make a real difference to the economic performance of this country. So thank you all. Secondly, I want thank the sponsors. You may think that's a bit odd coming from the Minister for Science and Innovation - don't I just tell them what to do and they get on with it? Well, not entirely. The Faraday initiative was started by DTI and EPSRC – and much credit must go to EPSRC for having had the courage to press ahead when DTI was temporarily embarrassed for funds in 1997. But in recent years other sponsors have willingly come on board, sometimes sacrificing cherished projects in order to play their part in building up this wider national capability. DEFRA and PPARC have now been followed by BBSRC, NERC and the Scottish Executive; and I know that the Welsh Assembly and ESRC are equally keen to participate if we can find suitable partnership proposals. And we have interest from the RDAs who see the potential of Faraday Partnerships for cluster building. The fact that so many independent funders are willing to work constructively together is a really important signal, and one that I find extremely encouraging. And finally, I want to thank the people who do the hard work; researchers, business people; technology translators; and not forgetting QuoTec, our "Faraday facilitators" who are there to help you in any way possible. I suspect that if we added up all the people who are involved, we would all be surprised. But let us make sure that we really do make the most of the strength that this offers. The meeting today and tomorrow is an important way of stimulating new ideas, meeting colleagues, discovering new ways of working, and letting sponsors know how you want to play things in future. It is a real opportunity for you to make your voice heard and I hope you will seize it. |
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Other speeches by Lord Sainsbury of Turville
(the following are available from the archive) |
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