Government stumps up £200m for tech centres

David Cameron hopes elite tech centres will bridge gap between academia and business

In a speech to the CBI today, David Cameron announced the government's plans to invest more than £200m in a network of elite technology and innovation centres to drive growth in high-tech industries.

Cameron hopes the centres will bridge the gap between universities and businesses, and better commercialise Britain’s academic research.

Business secretary Vince Cable said: “we need to do more to ensure the UK benefits from its world-class research, and these centres will help take ideas from the drawing board to the marketplace.”

“This scheme will mean companies can access technology and skills that would otherwise be out of reach,” he added.

The network will be established and overseen by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), but individual centres will have a high degree of autonomy, meaning they can respond quickly to business needs. They will be organised according to models proposed by Hermann Hauser and James Dyson.

Working with industry, academia and other interested parties, the TSB will help identify the technology areas the centres will support. The TSB will decide which centres it should invest in by April 2011.

“High-tech industries are the future of the British economy, and growing sectors that exploit new and emerging technologies will help rebalance the economy and provide the highly skilled, well-paid jobs we need,” said Cable.

Each centre will focus on technologies that have the potential to reach a large global market and for which the UK has significant capability.

Areas identified as possibilities by Hermann Hauser included future internet technologies, plastic electronics, software and technologies addressing renewable energy and climate change, satellite communications, fuel cells and stem cell regenerative research.