The Research and Development Society

Tuesday 17 January 2006, 6.00pm
The Royal Society, 7 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG

The need for successful innovation as a means of creating commercial value from science and technology has never been greater - especially for the UK. Commercial R&D is no longer enabled by corporate R&D centres, which all but died out in the 80's and 90's, and the performance of UK business R&D remains worryingly weak at a time in which the manufacturing and technology challenge from Asia is growing mightily. The UK government has recognised the importance of "third stream activities" for universities, talks of the UK Innovation System, and funding has risen but results are at best patchy.

It may be that the "default model" which sees technology transfer in a single step from science base to commercial application is too simplistic. Simon Davey believes it is time to again consider the virtues of a bricks-and-mortar approach to developing advanced technologies - establishing an effective mezzanine platform between the science base and the intensity of commercial product development. Such a platform reintroduces the mechanism that died out with the corporate R&D centres. The Missing Mezzanine describes this.

Simon Davey is the Chief Executive of Scientific Generics Limited, one of the world's leading commercial technology development organisations. Based in Cambridge UK, but with facilities in Boston USA, Frankfurt, Scandinavia and Hong Kong; Scientific Generics develops advance technologies and breakthrough products for a global client base. Davey, with a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge and thirty years in the technology business, has recently set up a joint venture technology company with a Chinese partner. The experience has galvanised his understanding of how important it will be for Western economies to fully leverage their science and technology base.