CSEP conference on UK economic growth 2024

The Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance's annual 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.

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.

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.

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.