An article in The Observer Business section told how only 3% of Britain’s consider their country to be the most innovative nation.
Most people polled believed that China would top the World for innovation by 2020, taking over from the USA and Japan.
As UK based product design consultants we are constantly involved in new and innovative projects which seek to solve the issues we face in our day to day lives. It is worrying to see the lack of ambition and investment in innovation which leads to such low estimations of our positions on the World stage. In this globalised age we need to be capitalising on the countries ideas and research and rewarding those who have the vision to succeed. As the article points out, the Technology strategy Board is making steps to encourage innovation in the UK, but can this organisation alone really make a difference?
Various well known business people comment that the UK needs to encourage entrepreneurs to build new business, and that our banks are too risk averse. What else do we need to change to compete with the innovation superpowers?
Without any widespread UK manufacturing base, and if we aren’t involved in innovation, all we have left are service industries. Not a great outlook.
