0.6 Discussion  (Page 2/8)

The role of the UK and Welsh Higher Education (HE) sector is critical to the agenda. The research shows that industry needs the support of Universities but in very specific ways. Firstly the critical role of developing human capital with the skills and knowledge needed to become quick useful to business. The human capital does not only need to have STEM skills but also commercial awareness is essential. The talent that is needed to keep Wales and the UK as a meaningful player in these emerging sectors must have a mindset that is open, collaborative and global. Secondly the Universities must be an environment where world class research can flourish. They must be capable of recruiting and retaining the best research talent. Clearly no University can be world class in every subject but there does need to be pockets of truly excellent research work. The research clearly shows that industry needs Universities to focus on the human capital elements of their portfolio of activity. They see other offerings as a much lower priority including access to facilities, advice on manufacturing and regulatory matters and on business strategy. The message is clear ‘give us appropriately trained and experienced talent and create a relevant world class research environment, leave the business operations and value generation to us’. Perspectives from the study underpinning this are as described above.

Supply of talent

• The data demonstrates the high level of expertise and the multidisciplinary nature of the “Human Capital” involved in the activity across the cluster.
• The importance of ongoing training and development is clear from both the Collaborative questionnaire and stakeholder interviews. The continued success and growth of regions being underpinned by development of such skills fits with the observations of numerous commentators such as the ONS (2004) and Work Foundation (2006).

Networks

• The global spread of both 1-1 and multipartite partnerships within the TX/UK cohort demonstrates the reach of the knowledge network. The worldwide perspective of innovation systems poses an interesting question for how this fits with the regional approach of considering a Knowledge Economy as presented by Cooke and De Laurentis (2003).
• The network effect of knowledge dissemination and value creation across the region of Southwest Wales is considered by Abbey et al. (2008) for the Technium/ILS I network. Extending this across the CNH, ILS II network into the TX/UK Collaborative presents a significantly larger network to consider.

Science

It is clear from the study that industry looks to higher education to establish and maintain pockets of ‘world class’ research. Local industry often uses the fact that relevant research activity at the highest level exists in its locality as a differentiator when negotiating a new commercial relationship. Most companies in Wales active in the knowledge economy are on the smaller end of the spectrum. This often means that local research has a potentially disproportionate impact. Such small enterprises are unlikely to have a critical mass of research of their own and therefore their offering to a third party can be greatly enhanced by local research excellence as long as it is relevant, accessible and open.