UK Call for new technology drive to spur growth

Britain should invoke some of the spirit of Inmos - a government-owned semiconductor company set up more than 30 years ago - to establish a £300m series of new technology centers to lay the basis for economic growth, according to a top government adviser.

"The UK should focus on technologies where it has a lead and back them with solid amounts of money," said Hermann Hauser, a scientist-cum-venture capitalist who is producing a report for Lord Mandelson later this month on several new technology initiatives. Hauser believes that due to the big fiscal deficit money for new state-backed technology developments in the next few years is likely to be tight, whichever party wins the next election. However, the economic spin-offs from backing such ventures are likely to be substantial in the long run, he says. "The lessons from Inmos have taught us that when governments put money into new technologies, they nearly always over-estimate the benefits in the short term but under-estimate what they will be over a long period," Hauser said. Bristol-based Inmos was set up by the Labour government in 1978 to develop a new series of microchips and received about £65m in public funds.