Jane Lambert
Earlier this week the Prime Minister launched the Building our Industrial Strategy green paper which I discussed in "Harnessing the Potential of the UK's Home Grown Inventors" - The Government's Proposed Industrial Strategy 24 Jan 2017 Inventors Club, Implementing the Industrial Strategy: IPO seeks new Business Support Policy Adviser 25 Jan 2017 and Nesta's Inventor Prize 26 Jan 2017 IP Yorkshire. The launch took place immediately after a cabinet meeting at Sci-Tech Daresbury, a science and innovation campus just off the M56 (see Prime Minister launches Industrial Strategy plans at Sci-Tech Daresbury 23 Jan 2017.
I was in Daresbury this morning for the first breakfast meeting of the New Year. This event attracts about 100 hi-tech entrepreneurs, companies, universities, business support agencies, private equity and angel investors, patent and trade mark attorneys and lawyers from across North West England and beyond. The event takes place between 08:00 and 09:30 after which there is usually a talk on a topic of interest to the business community.
Today's talk was entitled Exporting is Great – and you can do it! by Charles Jacobson, International Trade Advisor at the Department for International Trade. The Department for International Trade is a new department set up by the present Prince Minister under Dr Liam Fox MP when she entered office last year. Before the Department was set up, Charles worked for UKTI. When I spoke to him briefly after his talk, he told me that the Department had left all the previous teams and structures in place.
Although most of the talk was on practical measures such as finding out how to get to the town centre from the airport before leaving the country and some useful websites to consult when carrying out desk research, Charles began with a table ranking countries by the number of patent applications in 2011. China was at the top followed by the USA and Japan. We were bottom of the list. I am not sure of the point he was making but the caption under his slides was that there is a world of ideas out there. True, but the overwhelming majority of them occur abroad and not here.
I have been coming to the Daresbury breakfast meetings and the talks afterwards for several years and can thoroughly recommend them. The next event at the centre is a Biomedical and Chemicals Business Pitching Event on 16 Feb 2017. Future events include a North West University Fair on the 23 March and breakfast meetings on 17 March, 28 April, 28 May, 22 Sept, 20 Oct, 17 Nov and 8 Dec 2017.
Anybody who wants to attend those events regularly should join the Network Hub by registering online.
If anyone wants to talk about this article or business or legal support for high-tech startups in the North West generally. give me a call during office hours on 0161 850 0080 or 020 7404 5252 or send me a message through my contact form.
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