Imperial convenes major economic growth conference in White City

The inaugural conference for Imperial’s Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance (CSEP) took place at the White City Deep Tech campus this week.

The conference brought together over 100 senior delegates from across government, industry and academia to discuss how the UK can harness and improve its competitive advantage in key technology-based sectors including medtech, biopharmaceuticals, telecoms and data science, aerospace, tidal power and fine chemicals.

CSEP is a joint initiative between Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering and Imperial College Business School funded through philanthropic support from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, founded by Lord Sainsbury. It combines expertise and knowledge in science, technology, economics and management from across Imperial and beyond.

“It is most important to help UK sectors to compete on the global stage, rather than just aim to protect them from global competition” Lord David Sainsbury

Opening the conference, Professor Peter Todd, Dean of Imperial College Business School welcomed delegates to the White City Deep Tech Campus and outlined the role that universities like Imperial play in finding the future opportunities for technology sectors to create economic growth.

Lord Sainsbury gave crucial insights into why the UK had been suffering from poor productivity performance since the global financial crisis and the challenges of increasing the UK's competitive advantage in high-value added sectors. He also spoke about the critical importance of collaborative and co-created policies between academia, industry and government in achieving success, guided by specific and focused objectives.

SUPPORTING KEY SECTORS

Led by Imperial’s world-leading academic researchers, CSEP is coordinating a number of studies that are assessing the strengths, barriers and opportunities for sectors and technologies in which the UK has key expertise, and that have significant potential to grow.

The conference heard the findings from the publication of CSEP’s latest report on UK Health Technologies Health, wealth and growth, led by Professor James Moore Jr from the Department of Bioengineering in partnership with the Association of British HealthTech Industries (ABHI). The UK’s HealthTech sector contributes £13bn of gross added value to the UK economy, thanks to deep expertise in medical innovation. Despite this, the report found that the sector’s potential remains much greater and can be more effectively supported through streamlined regulatory standards, greater public-private partnerships and financial incentives to attract greater R&D capacity to the UK.

Professor Moore was joined by an expert panel to discuss the challenges that the report looks to solve, that are faced by SMEs and large multinational companies alike. 

The conference also featured presentations that outlined findings across other key UK sectors:

• Professor Laura Mainini from the Department of Aeronautics presented research into the UK’s aerospace sector, where huge challenges but opportunities for innovation lie in meeting increased global demand for air travel while attempting to meet net-zero aviation targets.
• Professor Tim Green from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering outlined his work in seeking to address the key question of global potential of tidal power energy generation and the UK's position as a potential market leader. 
• Professor Joachim Taiber from the Imperial College Business School discussed how software-defined vehicles has the potential to reshape the automotive industry and where the significant opportunities for the UK lie.
• Professor James Barlow, Co-Director of CSEP presented his work on the biopharmaceutical sector showing that biopharma is evolving into a new ecosystem and how government can enable the UK research sector and the NHS to maximise the impact of this evolution.
• Professor Nilay Shah from the Department of Chemical Engineering outlined the crucial nature of the fine chemicals sector in the UK, but how challenges persist over high costs and firm sizes.
• Professor Eric Yeatman, Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, spoke about the key technology drivers and threats to the development of UK data centres, alongside the growth potential of the future telecommunications industry.

SHAPING A SUCCESSFUL INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Of equal importance to the discussions were how these bottom-up sector strategies should feed into the UK’s overall industrial policy approach, where improvements to key growth sectors can significantly impact the UK’s economic and industrial output.

Presentations from Dr Robert D. Atkinson, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and Professor Arnoud De Meyer, Emeritus Professor at Singapore Management University gave crucial insights into how industrial policy had been developed in the US and Singapore respectively, and the lessons the UK can learn from the implementation of this policy. Dr Anna Nilsson-Ehle, Chair of Sweden’s Innovation Agency Vinnova, reflected on Sweden’s approach to funding innovation to support Swedish competitiveness in conversation with Professor Robert Shorten, CSEP Co-Director.

In the final panel session of the day, Dr Nilsson-Ehle was joined by Rt Hon Greg Clark, former Business Secretary and Chairman of Warwick Innovation District; Chi Onwurah MP, Chair of the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee; Lord Harrington of Watford, former Business and Industry Minister and author of the Harrington Review of Foreign Direct Investment; and Kanishka Narayan MP, Labour MP for Vale of Glamorgan.

The panel came together to discuss how cross-political support for the UK’s approach to industrial policy and industrial strategy can support the key growth sectors discussed throughout the day. They discussed the importance of consultation and collaboration at the early stages of policymaking as a key way to build consensus and support behind policy, and also how the UK needs to focus support on certain sectors where it has a global competitive advantage to generate success.