Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
This week I visited some Cambridge Network Founder Members who make good things.
Many of our Members provide outsourced R&D, or other services or service-related products like software that is continually updated over the internet. All great work, and it brings Cambridge ideas to the world. But it is also really interesting to see the kinds of physical products that you can justify MAKING in an expensive place like Cambridge.
Nokia's Morph is a next generation concept phone which came out of their collaboration with the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre. It is winning prizes because it challenges our hard, inflexible, energy-hungry mobile phone designs with a new kind of design, and it is being exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art. Obviously it is wonderful to see concrete evidence of Nokia's Eurolab collaboration with the University of Cambridge already gaining such recognition.
Johnson Matthey's emission control catalysts are cleaning the soot and other gases out of vehicle exhausts to meet ever more stringent environmental standards. It is impressive to walk through laboratory after laboratory running live tests on real cars, often with different European licence plates, to confirm the impact of technology that is being used around the world. Over 90% of Johnson Matthey's outputs are exported.
Cambridge Consultants projects result in products, processes and systems, from washing machines that use 90% less water developed for local start-ups to easy-to-use dry powder inhalers for overseas customers. We brought a group of new Members from around the Greater South East to Cambridge Consultant's facility to discuss how to promote their own products and services using our online newspaper. Dr Brian Moon was looking for wood to touch as he explained how it was that in the midst of a recession, Cambridge Consultants has enjoyed its best year ever. With such innovative and highly cited Founders, it is easy to see why listing services on our website does so much to improve the search ranking and traffic to all the smaller Members sites.
These Founder Members make things we use daily to communicate, have less impact on our environment, be healthier. They are making them better here in our region, so much better that people around the world value and buy the product. That gives skilled work to many people who are not graduates of universities. At a time when recession and price-based competition are forcing many manufacturers to develop products overseas, that is a great contribution to our economy. They can do this because they have better ideas, and those ideas change the world.
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