| foreword |
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The
Competitiveness White Paper1 pub-lished last December stressed
the importance of the knowledge-driven economy. The UK,
and particularly Scotland, cannot compete in the modern
market place on the basis of a low-cost, low-skills
workforce. The Scottish Parliament will need to
capitalise and build on the ingenuity, creativity and
scientific excellence of our higher education
institutions, our people and our companies, if we are to
modernise our economy and create products and processes
that will give us sustained competitive advantage. In the many visits I have
undertaken, I have been greatly impressed by the wealth
of talent, creativity and expertise in our universities
and research institutes. Scotland has a world-class
science base: we have an excellent record in scientific
publication. But too often in the past we have failed to
convert that into products and processes for Scotland's
economic benefit. I am pleased to say that that has been
changing rapidly and very significantly over recent
years. All of Scotland's universities, higher education
institutions and research institutes realise the
importance of commercia-lisation of the outputs of
science and, indeed, on certain measures, some compare
favourably with prestigious universities in the United
States. Following the joint Scottish Enterprise/Royal
Society of Edinburgh Commercia-lisation Enquiry, the
resulting Technology Ventures Initiative has also been
helpful in raising the profile of commercialisation over
the last two years.
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Government we have also been busy. We have made it a
priority to invest in our science base. The Joint
Infrastructure Fund has produced £600 million to
re-invest in our scientific infrastructure, which had
been depleted over many years. The University Challenge
Fund has provided £50 million for commercialisation
projects - and I was delighted to note just a couple of
weeks ago that Scotland had mounted two of the fourteen
successful bids. Out of the £50 million total, we
received £5.5 million; £3 million for a
Glasgow/Strathclyde consortium and £2.5 million for
Edinburgh University with a number of research
institutes. The Science Enterprise Challenge will provide
£25 million for Centres of Enterprise in universities
across the United Kingdom to encourage an entrepreneurial
attitude in our academics and our students. I am very
hopeful that Scotland will succeed in this Challenge too.
The greatest contribution from higher education to our
economy will come from graduates who leave higher
education with a desire to create wealth. |
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Competitiveness White Paper took as its theme Building
the Knowledge Driven Economy, and the package of measures
described in the White Paper represents a systematic
attempt by Government to build such an economy. Scottish
Enterprise has also published its new strategy. The same
ideas and imperatives informed that process and, indeed,
some of the main recommendations in the White Paper have
already been acted on by Scottish Enterprise: in
particular the injunction that Government, business and
academia come together to ensure that our economy
benefits more directly from the huge public investment in
scientific research. |
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In
the light of this activity, I announced to the Scottish
Grand Committee in January that we intended setting up a
Knowledge Economy Taskforce to accelerate collaboration
between industry and the universities, and encourage
further action by the Scottish Parliament. Over a two
month period the work of the taskforce has been to look
at four related issues:
- a revised framework
for the commercialisation of research;
- incentives within
higher education institutions to encourage
business collaboration to ensure that Scotland
gets maximum economic benefit from the practical
application of research;
- a framework within
which the science base can work with Scottish
Enterprise on the development and implementation
of their cluster action plans
- maximising the
advantage of a Centre for Enterprise under the
Science Enterprise Challenge for all of Scotland.
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are, of course, many more dimensions to the Knowledge
Driven Economy than these, but if we can make early
progress on these four aspects we will be well on our
way. This report sets out the views of the taskforce on
the four issues. |
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also wish to express my thanks to Ian Graham-Bryce,
Crawford Beveridge and John Sizer for agreeing to work
closely with me and for their invaluable help and advice.
The taskforce also benefited from the expert help of
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Booz, Allen and Hamilton whose
considerable pro bono efforts should be acknowledged. |
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am confident that this report will be a valuable
contribution to what is a crucial element of Scotland's
economic future and I commend it to the new Scottish
Parliament as a basis for taking forward action. |
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Lord Macdonald
Minister for Business and Industry |
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