Land speed entrepreneur urges Britain to take risk on small companies driving innovation
The British failure to educate, to take risks and focus on the potential of small companies will cost the next generation dear and with Brexit looming we need to take British manufacturing way past the current and embarrassing 8% of GDP.
That will be the challenge laid down by entrepreneur Richard Noble, former holder of the world land speed record and the man behind the ThrustSSC vehicle, which currently holds the record, when he delivers the fifth annual Vice-Chancellor's lecture at the University of Bradford.
Over 30 years Richard and the teams he has led have pioneered new industrial projects in the air and land, most famously Thrust2 and ThrustSSC, which reached 763.035 mph. He is planning a further attempt on the land speed record in 2019 with BloodhoundSSC, which aims to break 1,000 mph.
An honorary graduate of the University, he will use the lecture to argue that there seems to be a common and pervasive long-term difficulty with British culture; big projects only get financed with establishment-recognised contractors. But the establishment contractors seldom take risk and so innate British creativity and challenge is lost. Perhaps that didn’t matter during the safe EU years.
However, the world has changed. Using high-performance, non-hierarchical companies and the latest research technologies, small companies can easily outperform the cumbersome and slow moving major contractors, all the time driving ahead with the usual fragile funding and accepting high levels of daily risk.
Coupled with this, British education has been found wanting. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment has seen Britain’s global ranking for numeracy and literacy fall from 5th to 22nd place in 2016.
Richard’s contention will be that we have to recognise this and change if we are to take advantage of the opportunities presented over the next few years.
Brexit: Time to take risk and back the little people driving the big engine... takes place on Wednesday 3 October 2018, 18:00 – 19:15, at Norcroft Centre, University of Bradford, Richmond Road, Bradford BD7 1DP.