11 Aug Imperial College hosts inaugural Innovation and Growth Conference at White City
Hosted by Imperial College Business School, the Faculty of Engineering and Lord Sainsbury of Turville at ScaleSpace on Imperial’s White City Innovation Campus, the conference brought together senior figures from across academia, business and government to discuss how to increase UK growth and competitiveness in three key UK sectors: Biopharmaceuticals, Medtech and Telecommunications.
Imperial researchers from the Business School and the Faculty of Engineering presented cutting-edge research into how the UK can make the most of its competitive advantage in the three key sectors of Biopharmaceuticals, Medtech and Telecommunications. Panels with representatives from multinational R&D-performing businesses, investors, SMEs and regulators across the three key sectors responded to the Imperial studies with their own unique perspectives of where the UK can make the most impact in supporting business innovation and growth.
The conference closed with discussions on how the UK can ensure future economic growth. Lower R&D investment than that of competitors like Germany, the US and Japan and relatively low numbers of UK researchers moving into industry are in stark contrast to the UK and other OECD countries, according to Dr Carlos Lopez-Gomez, Head of Policy Links in the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing, from the findings of the Innovation report 2023.
In a lively discussion, building greater absorptive capacity within research organisations to take advantage of future opportunities, greater sharing of data between academia and businesses to identify areas of friction in supporting innovation and using government procurement to support innovation were highlighted as key issues to enable greater UK growth.
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