Learning from the best: How Wales can capitalise on the UK’s Industrial Strategy
Learning from the best: How Wales can capitalise on the UK’s Industrial Strategy
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For the last 15 years, Welsh businesses have had a unique and little-known advantage through a partnership with one of the world’s most innovative institutions – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Welsh Government has a one-of-a-kind relationship with MIT — as a member of the Industrial Liaison Programme (ILP) there are invitations to a series of events and conferences aimed at helping industry liaise with the research and unique output of MIT.
Normally, this programme is restricted to industrial partners — blue-chip organisations like Mitsubishi, Rio Tinto, BT, Apple and 3M. However, the Welsh Ministers have a membership which allows them to extend an invitation to SMEs and start-ups across the Welsh ecosystem.
The ILP runs themed events throughout the year and around the world to facilitate this connectivity between the membership and researchers of MIT. Everything from Startup Exchange Demo days, manufacturing, AI, sustainability, and global symposiums in cities from Bangkok to Vienna, Seoul to Madrid, all open to Welsh SMEs, founders, and directors.
MIT has spent 80 years at the forefront of innovation, since the establishment of the Rad Lab in the 1940s. Research and development is a philosophy there, and it is completely unavoidable. Having the opportunity to get onto campus, soak up that culture, and begin to understand the difference is an important step toward creating our own national innovation culture.
Encouraging and enabling more Welsh innovators to take advantage of the MIT partnership could be crucial to ensuring Wales gains the most from the realisation of the UK’s Industrial Strategy.
With MIT’s track record of turning research into world-changing companies, and Wales’ established strengths across the Industrial Strategy’s priority sectors, this partnership represents more than just access to the campus – it can be a blueprint for building the innovation culture that Wales needs to thrive in the coming decades.
A 2015 report estimated that – taken as a group – companies founded by MIT graduates would rank in the top tier of nations by GDP measures. Their impact and success are enormous, and show no sign of slowing.
One tired headline that did the rounds for decades was the need for Wales to create its own Silicon Valleys, but these shallow strategies completely miss the point about the competitive advantage that regions have built up over decades. These kinds of things can’t be created out of thin air.
During a visit in 2018, I met a founder who was discussing the details of her seed investment raise. Compared to fundraises back in Wales, one of the group quipped that it was more of an avocado seed than what we’re typically used to – it was 50x the size of investment rounds we see locally.
Instead of trying to copy the MIT strategy, Welsh founders need to get over there, take it all in, make connections, understand the processes and lessons, and implement them into the things they have control over – their companies.
The difference in their approach to innovation is akin to trying to explain mortgages to a lion. It needs to be seen, understood, and, most importantly, to see and appreciate the success on the other side, to really understand why it works.
The next MIT ILP R&D conference is coming up in November and Welsh businesses can apply to attend for free – to not take advantage of opportunities like this feels negligent.
Using the MIT partnership is a massive advantage for Welsh companies, and one that if we tapped into it more, could give us all a significant head start in the race for the next generation of growth.
Without taking advantage of all of these opportunities, we face another generation of being left behind and not taking this moment to be ahead of the AI disruption curve, while we watch other regions capture the growth that could – should – have been ours. Now is the time to act.
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