Social Networking for the Microelectronics Industry
And the answer is...
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (DTI in old money) recently published the Hauser Review on Technology and Innovation Centres in the UK. Unlike many Government reports it can be digested in one sitting accompanied by your favourite beverage. Being a student of innovation systems these past 6 or 7 years, and having presented, written reports and expressed the needs of the UK's semiconductor industry, I read the report with great interest.
Many of the findings and conclusions will not come as any great surprise to many a seasoned pro (certainly not me)... but that doesn't take anything away from what I (personally) see as a jolly good summary of the issues and a way forward. Hence a big thumbs up from me - its high time the UK got serious about exploiting its science and engineering assets - if you've got it, flaunt it I say!
We can no longer accept a lack-lustre performance - in the economic sense - when we truly excel in innovation and technical excellence. What has been missing (in my view) is a joined up approach, spreading investments too thinly, an almost complete ignorance over the importance of proximity and location as well as a political champion with the balls, energy and budget to go for it on a world stage (and... a long list of other things too which Dr. Hauser also mentions).
One of the words Dr. Hauser uses in the report repeatedly is a word that I favour yet is often a political hot potato "elite". In a world where we are competing with "the best, of the best, of the best" we have to be supremely fit for the future and where we go from here has to be based on merit towards that objective - not political correctness or pandering to the masses. UK is primed for taking its medicine.
On the downside the report does not mention chips or semiconductor IP explicitly (plastic electronics does get a mention, so do Internet technologies) - the UK's industry has evolved ahead of our European cousins and we should drive it forwards... hard. There's a lot of rich pickings to be had and its ridiculous to suggest the end is near... and you can guess who will presenting this view to the officials in charge.
Off of my soapbox now (for the time being).
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