Strategic technology

This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
    Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
    Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

This week I visited a couple of our Members who are national champions. The conversations in both cases were all about technology that is strategic to the United Kingdom. These Members invest very large amounts of money in translating basic research into platforms that make us all more efficient and that bring money into the country through export. They are involved in the Cambridge cluster because our Universities are pre-eminent in basic research and because our local companies are very successful in achieving exports, even in this economic recession.

The first visit was a car journey down the A14, past Bury St Edmund to Martlesham in Suffolk. BT have built a campus at Adastral Park which attracts foreign direct investment by technology companies innovating with them. The capability that BT have for delivering resilient telecommunications networks in 120 countries gives them a key role in fast-growth new markets like cloud computing and social networking but also makes them a critical part of our national infrastructure of communications. If it seems strange that capability paid for by society for apparently frivolous reasons like social networking should be strategic to our survival, we can consider the men and aircraft that flew out of Martlesham in the Battle of Britain. In the 1930s, flying inspired visions of technology extending human senses, as well as nightmares of civil destruction. We were lucky that a few young men from Britain, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa had learned how to use that technology before we had to defend ourselves.  Super-fast broadband allows us to tackle current issues like assisted living, traffic demand management,  and the legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games because solutions require reliable and resilient communications. If we get those things right, we will win export markets for healthcare, integrated transport systems etc.

The second visit was by train and bike, through Kings Cross, past St Pauls Cathedral, past the Tower of London and over the Thames to the Design Museum in Southwark. The Technology Strategy Board had launched their new Creative Industries platform during the day, and were reviewing their second year of operations with some of the organizations that have been working with them across a wide range of areas.  I chatted to people from larger organizations such as Home Office Scientific Development Branch and Rolls Royce, startups like Cell Centric, and academics researching Fashion. Each already had their own connection to Cambridge, so it was good to learn that they had all heard of Cambridge Network and wanted to stay in touch. We already deliver events for the Electronic Knowledge Transfer Network across the northern part of East of England. And it was fun to chat to the people working on the Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and Innovation Platforms and get their insights into how technology will create wealth here in the United Kingdom. The individual brilliance of Douglas Bader or Alan Turing would have been ineffective without the platforms of the Supermarine Spitfire and Bletchley Park, which represented long investments by the government of the day. It is good to learn that that tradition of long-term investment goes forward.

We are lucky in Cambridge that national champions located across the Greater South East of England travel to attend our events. They link us into national programmes and give us the opportunity to participate in global markets. Our technology is strategic to them, and that makes it much easier for us all to get the investment we need to take Cambridge ideas to the world.

Comments

[Melvin F. DeVorchik]

Yes,Ccambridge is viewed to be on the globale stage....but how significant a player it is...as they never believe the hype...