BRITAIN must not use the results of its Technology Foresight Programme to direct the research carried out in universities and research institutes, a senior industrialist warned last week. Peter Williams, who is chairman of Oxford Instruments, said foresight is a tool for industry. The government鈥檚 priority for academia should be to allow scientists to pursue curiosity-driven research, he said.
The aim of technology foresight is to identify technologies that industry and consumers will want in 15 to 20 years鈥� time. Earlier this month, the director-general of the research councils, John Cadogan, said that the government is already using early results from the foresight programme to set funding priorities for the research councils.
鈥淚鈥檓 a great fan of the foresight programme,鈥� Williams told industrialists in London during the annual Innovation Lecture. 鈥淏ut we must resist the temptation to use foresight to pick winners.鈥� Williams, who is also chairman of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, believes the real value of foresight is that it will give industry clues to the technologies and skills it will need in future. But if the government ploughs all its money for basic research into 鈥減romising鈥� areas identified through the foresight programme, it is likely to miss big opportunities.
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Williams cited the example of superconductivity 鈥� the technology on which Oxford Instruments is built. If foresight had been applied 30 years ago his company would look very different today, he said. The most successful application of superconductivity has been in medical imagers. But Williams doubted that foresight would have spotted this in the 1960s.
鈥淏ets would clearly have been placed on power transmission and magnetically levitated trains, but superconducting magnets in every hospital would have been unthinkable,鈥� he said. Money for basic research would have been diverted into other areas and the world might have been deprived of body scanners.
Williams also warned industry not to be complacent. If Britain is to bridge the gap between industry and academia, 鈥渋t is industry that must shift its centre of gravity, not the science base,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e must not fall into the trap of believing that the science base can somehow 鈥榖ale out鈥� industry and compensate for its deficiencies.鈥�
Industry should spend more on R&D, he said, while banks and other investors should be prepared to accept lower dividends in the short term so that companies can invest. 鈥淎mong the top 200 international companies, R&D spending ran at nearly three times the level of dividends,鈥� said Williams, 鈥渨hereas an average UK company distributes twice as much in dividends as it spends on R&D.鈥�