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Listen to Lord David Willetts’ views on how the UK innovation landscape is evolving and how the Government’s Innovation Strategy will facilitate technology development and support levelling up.
In the Catapult Network’s Supercharging Innovation podcast, knowledge experts and leaders from the Catapult Network talk with some of the UK’s top industrial and academic leaders and parliamentarians to get their views on science, innovation and technology. Together, they are putting UK innovation under the spotlight and exploring the role of Government, businesses, the research community, private investors, and other innovative organisations in strengthening the economy through collaboration. Welcome to the Catapult Network’s Supercharging Innovation Podcast, subscribe now.
The Innovate UK Catapult Network provides a unique combination of cutting-edge R&D facilities and world-class technical expertise to support UK business innovation. Catapults are a critical element of Innovate UK’s portfolio of products and services, where the application of research is accelerated, and where new technologies are further developed, scaled up and realised. The Catapult Network is made up of nine world-leading technology and innovation centres with more than 65 national locations.
Hello, and welcome to the Catapult Network's Supercharging Innovation podcast. My name is Jeremy Silver, chair for this year of the Catapult Network. In this series, I'm talking with some of the UK's top industry and academic leaders, business people, and parliamentarians to get their views on the future of innovation. On today's episode, I'm delighted to welcome the right honorable lord David Willets, fellow of the Royal Society. Lord Willets is the president of the Resolution Foundation.
Jeremy Silver:He served as the member of parliament for Havant between 92 and 2015 and was a minister for universities and science in the coalition government of 2010 to 2014 and previously worked at the Treasury in the number 10 policy unit. Lord Willets is a visiting professor at King's College London, a board member of UKRI, a board member of Surrey Satellites, and to the Biotech Growth Trust. David, it's a real pleasure to have you with us today.
Lord David Willetts:Thanks for inviting me. Good to be on the show.
Jeremy Silver:During this whole series, we've been talking to people about their thoughts on innovation and the the relationship between universities, Catapults, the Catapults Network, other research and technology organizations, and industry. And universities, but it's been an extraordinary period of change with Brexit and COVID in between times. How do you think all this has changed the innovation landscape and the agenda? What's what's different from now from when you were in charge?
Lord David Willetts:I mean, it's it's been terrible having the COVID epidemic. On the other hand, the the good news for it is it's showing people the importance of science and technology. And so overall, we've got a a government commitment to bringing total r and d spend up to 2.4% of GDP, which is fantastic. Now in my day, I had to fight against cuts and eventually secure a flat cash settlement, And it it could have been a lot worse, but now we've got prospects of real growth, which is very exciting. There was always a group of sort of purists who said somehow government shouldn't be promoting key technologies.
Lord David Willetts:The government should simply be doing the up stream research and then handing over to commercial investors in the market. And my fear was always that they expected commercial investors to take more risk than actually they were willing to do, and hence the public funding was stopping too soon. That was the thinking behind migrate at great technologies. Well, I think that argument has also now been comprehensively won by those of us who say, yes, there is a real role for the government in promoting technologies, general purpose technologies on their long route to market. Those are 2 favorable trends.
Lord David Willetts:Obviously, Brexit has been a big hit for the British research community, and we've still got to work our way through that and do our best in circumstances. And that, I'm sure, is something we can all do.
Jeremy Silver:It's very interesting, this point about commercialization. The world knows of the UK's academic capabilities and our research papers and our eminent academics, obviously, world class. But somehow or other, there is still this perception that we lag behind other countries in terms of picking picking out the most brilliant research that could be translated into commercial value. And I don't think we're as bad at that as we perhaps think we are, but why is that perception still there, do you think?
Lord David Willetts:I think if I may say so, your pause there after picking was because you were in didn't know whether to say picking winners or not. And that actually gets to the heart of the British debate because we are still scarred by the sense that if you give governments any discretion, they end up subsidizing British Leyland and all that kind of stuff, which we know doesn't work. But my view is that governments inevitably have to take judgments about activities they support. It's better to have a framework for doing so, especially if you are talking things like general purpose technologies, which are inherently disruptive. You can be pretty confident that when you do something like that, you're not sort of propping up aging unsuccessful companies.
Lord David Willetts:I think the picking winners trauma has had an impact in the UK for decades. It's led to awareness, which you just don't feel in the US or Germany, where, of course, they understand that that is a constructive role for government. Now, as you say, we have had some great successes, but we are sure we haven't got enough really big homegrown technology oriented companies. We need more of them. And when we have had historic opportunities, like Selexa on gene sequencing, sold to Illumina for 600,000,000.
Lord David Willetts:Now Illumina heading towards a $50,000,000,000 valuation, and they say 70% of the IP came from that British acquisition. So we've gotta be able to grow more homegrown technology companies that flourish. And, I mean, I'm on the board of Darktrace, the cybersecurity company, which I hope is another great prospect for going a really high value British technology company.
Jeremy Silver:You mentioned the impact of COVID, and and obviously, COVID has been a tragic and and horrendous impact for everybody. But at the same time, it has accelerated a digital adoption beyond the pace that was much faster than people expected. And a lot more people have suddenly realized that they can work remotely, that they can use video conferencing tools and so on. One of the other things that's happened as a consequence of that, of course, is that government has actually become a shareholder in a large number of startups through the breakthrough fund that, was a a COVID rescue project in a sense. Is that a a direction for the future?
Jeremy Silver:Is that a smarter way of avoiding the picking winners trap, do you think? Or is it just going to push that can further down the road?
Lord David Willetts:There is. It's another area where policy has changed very dramatically, and there are funds, you know, run out of, well, often in association with the British Business Bank for doing some of these investments. And that, I think, can be a good thing. I I think we need you need a panoply of measures. I think grants and loans and repayable grants, repayable in certain circumstances are all possibilities.
Lord David Willetts:But part of the backdrop to how things have changed is the kind of strategic competition in technology. The recognition now that technology is a crucial national asset. And so some of these shareholdings are also seen as in a enabling help strengthen government's capacity to keep at least something in the UK. Now we have to be very careful because I I've always believed in the sort of open market for British companies. I think they it should be possible for them to buy and sell companies around the world and vice versa.
Lord David Willetts:But I think that's another prism. The American Chinese technology competition, which is strategic, is having an impact on the things we do in Britain as well.
Jeremy Silver:Yes. And, obviously, the debate around the sale of Arm a few years ago to SoftBank and now its resale on to NVIDIA in the US is causing quite a few pauses for thought within government. I mean, do you have views about the degree to which a framework for protection of that kind is feasible, or does it just get in the way of of investment all the time, do you think?
Lord David Willetts:I think it increases the responsibility on the government to be productive as well. There was one technology entrepreneur in Cambridge who said to me a few years ago, and I thought it was very illuminating. He said, look. The security agencies are so clear that they understand the value of my company that they would not dream of it being, sold to China. On the other hand, the treasury is so confident they couldn't possibly assess whether any technologies of any value or not that they refuse to fund it themselves.
Lord David Willetts:And it was a very odd position. And my view is that when there are lists of kind of key technologies which people want to have some new oversight over because of their strategic significance. That list is also relevant for public policy and for things like innovate UK programs and priorities. And the good news is that I think in the in the innovation strategy, the government has updated My8 Great Technologies into sort of 7 technology families, and it's absolutely right to do an update. Most of the original group I identified drawing on expert advice are still in there in some way or other.
Lord David Willetts:And that is a framework for government investing, and it's quite close to the framework that also exists for government, scrutiny of overseas investments. So you've got both things going together.
Jeremy Silver:Interestingly, Kwasikwasang has published the innovation strategy. Last time we talked, we were anticipating it, but now we can see it in its detail. In a sense, what we see there is a blueprint for how things might go going forward and obviously addresses a number of these issues. And you've mentioned the new family of the magnificent seven, we might call them, following your great your 8 great. I think it was most interesting, I in a way, at the top level, was the fact that in a sense, this strategy replaces the previous strategy, which was an industrial strategy.
Jeremy Silver:And this is an innovation strategy, but it in many ways is addressing similar issues. Is what's the significance of that, do you think?
Lord David Willetts:This is very much focused on innovation, you're right, rather than on the classic sectors of which industrial strategy tends to focus on. I think it's a very useful document. I mean, there are some outstanding issues now to be resolved, and one, of course, is the funding behind it. And the treasury would always be reluctant quite understandably to fund just money to big established industrial sectors. But funding for innovation, I think that looks that is much more promising.
Lord David Willetts:And there is this commitment of the 2.4. Of course, it's an unusual commitment for government, and it's a combination of public spend and private spend reaching 2.4. So you can sense throughout the innovation strategy, what they're really looking for is levers of public spend that have the maximum impact in generating private spend alongside. And there, fortunately, we've got some pretty good evidence of things that have worked in the past. They're absolutely classic responsive mode innovate UK program smart awards.
Lord David Willetts:Where I would like to see more money going into those. We also know that the catalyst program, to be distinct from catapults, the catalyst program of funding projects from the lab through to the marketplace, linking up a research council in Innovate UK, which we did classically with Biotech, but you can do it in other areas as well. We've seen the evaluations for that, and they are good. They show very large amounts of private spend being generated. So I always say to my friends in the treasury, look, you know, if if you look through the programs that have been tried in the past 10 years and evaluated, you will find some pretty effective means of public spend generating private spend.
Lord David Willetts:And I have to say, the catapult network is definitely on that list as well, bringing in private money alongside public money. And I think there's, a lot of interest now in how the catapult network itself can grow.
Jeremy Silver:And the catapult network has been growing significantly over the last, few years and has really, I think, kind of matured. And certainly in my in my own catapult, the digital catapult, if we look at the companies that have been raising investment, following working with us, the number that they've raised collectively is over £4,000,000,000. I'm not claiming that that we're responsible for that entire race, but that sort of leverage, that stimulus is is is obviously, you know, really coming into its own now. But I think there's also this sense of how the catapults sit in the landscape that still, at times, I think confuses people. I suppose one of the areas that's interesting is what the relationship between universities and catapults is and should be.
Jeremy Silver:How do you square that circle?
Lord David Willetts:Well, that's another very hot topic, Jeremy. And and look. The the fact is historically, when Britain has had rather lower levels of r and d spend than other major advanced western countries, We have essentially put all our eggs in the basket of university based r and d. And and that was not an absurd strategy with money when money was tied. And in and in my book, a university education, I I set out the figures, and you can see that with a smaller total of public spend on r and d, what we did was we basically kind of pretty much matched the Americans and the French for HE spend on r and d, but then government spend on r and d outside universities growth, then it is reasonable for look for some of that growth to to thicken out the network of research institutes outside universities.
Lord David Willetts:And I think, obviously, of things like the German Fraunhofer's on which I model the catapults when we introduce the catapults. So catapults, I think, now and there are various ways you can create a a greater network. One model, which would be the classic British model, is, the tailor made solution, and you get a range of highly specific institute set up in certain circumstances. I always saw the catapults. One of the advantages of catapults, as I saw it as a template.
Lord David Willetts:So if ministers were in a hurry and wanted some new model, bringing some new focus in some new area of technology or some other key sector, Bringing together public and private spend. There would be a sort of off the shelf model. You can create another catapult. And, I hope I think there's better prospects for this now than I've been for quite a while. I hope that now that resource, the standardized model will work.
Lord David Willetts:Because one of the things I found frustrating is sometimes really smart people were involved in creating a a new institute for some purpose rather. And the first thing they have to do is go to spend lots of money on lawyers to create new articles of association tailor made for their body. That costs money and cost you 6 months or 12 months. The Catapult Network's message can be, if you have a priority using our model, you can set one up bloody quickly now.
Jeremy Silver:I think that's absolutely right. And it's it is interesting that the fundamental combination of of core funding, CR and D funding, and commercial revenue, which which distinguishes the Caswell model, I think is absolutely working and absolutely driving private investment. And that's really where it where you see it most effectively because of the way that it it crowds those private industrial players in. The other thing that's interesting, of course, about the catapults now that they're well established is their ability to incubate new areas and and to incubate new catapults. So then instead of having to throw a significant sum to start something from scratch, probably, across the network, we've got enough different, areas of specialisms and domain knowledge to be able to incubate new catapults from within.
Lord David Willetts:Very interesting. Very good point. That's a a very good thing. And, of course, we should also add in the list of advantages, which we can say that, of course, this funding model also ensures they're in the private sector. And sadly, and I regret this, but we haven't got a great record in Britain of enabling our public sector research establishments to flourish.
Lord David Willetts:I mean, we're fortunate. We've got some great ones that have survived. You know, NPL, National Physical Laboratory, the Met Office, of course, geological survey. But compared to other countries, they've had quite a shaky ride, and they do, as they're in the public sector, have a set of quite onerous controls on them, including on things like pay. And one reason we've ended up with so much r and d in the universities is a lot of public sector r and d establishments head for the universities as a favorable environment because their universities are, officially not part of the public sector.
Lord David Willetts:So a lot of the most tiresome public sector rules don't apply. So that's another reason why we've end up with such a higher education oriented research system. And, again, catapults provide the model of of how you can enjoy the freedoms of being in the private sector without having to go for university.
Jeremy Silver:It still feels as if there's a hard core in the treasury that still feels that the universities are the place where r and d should be done and that there's a suspicion of of some of these newfangled models. And we've we've only had catapults for 10 years. But I suppose in the great scheme of things compared with our universities started in medieval periods, they're relatively young institutions. But do
Lord David Willetts:you think that there's a need
Jeremy Silver:to sort of redress the balance? I've not suggested that it's an equal balance because we have enormously strong universities, and and no one wants to undermine them. But how do we how do we make them work better together?
Lord David Willetts:And, also, look, from the university perspective, and I'm very aware of this, they get very little of their research funding meeting full economic cost. Another issue for the CSR is is to ensure that universities can properly fund their r and d without everybody expecting to pay in 70% or 80% and nobody paying a 100%. That's another issue. So universities themselves have their criticisms and complaints. I think that for for universities and catapults, good working relationships matter.
Lord David Willetts:The university incentive structure is a bit different, and they are looking and I don't blame them for this. This is how universities function and how you promote people, and it's getting the highly cited papers in the prestigious journals really matter for them, and that's that is their incentive structure. So catapults are there partly to have a different incentive structure. They're always going to be, I think, sort of arm's length partnerships would be the best way forward for caterpoles. But the smart researchers in universities, and they may even put it very simply and crudely in some cases just wish to use catapult facilities as a base for doing some of their applied research.
Jeremy Silver:No. I think that's right. And there certainly seems to be a a growing demand actually to to be able to work more closely together and to and to actually look at some of the rules to try and simplify that and make that easier. Let me just take another aspect of this because going back to the innovation strategy and just thinking a little bit about some of the other things that work there, but also thinking about the role of universities as they occupy specific places around the country. There there seems to be an effort within government at the moment to use the innovation strategy to drive, and and and the increasing r and d spend to also address the government's leveling up agenda.
Jeremy Silver:And I'm just wondering whether do you think that makes sense? And have you got thoughts about how best to achieve that?
Lord David Willetts:Yep. That is, of course, has been historically a very delicate issue. One of the tricky issues that was bubbling on when I left government was a sort of location of a catapult. And those have always been, and I'm sure it continues to be very sensitive decisions. It is tricky because a government is entitled to have views about where stuff should happen and is entitled to think, hang on.
Lord David Willetts:Have we ended up putting all our money back into the southeast and not promoting other parts of the country? The fact is that when you look at applied research and business oriented research, that tends to be more geographically spread than the most academically prestigious research where there's a greater southeast effect. And the way that I think you can also pick this up is you need a kind of underlying quality threshold. You need to say, varying program by program, essentially, we're not gonna fund things or do things unless they pass some minimum standard of good return and good value for money. But after that, you may be able to say, hang on.
Lord David Willetts:We we noticed there's a set of bids in a particular part of the country. We want to prioritize that because it's no less affluent part of the country, and it's passed the quality measure. And given that we're sadly in several programs having to ration resource when there's many more that are sort of above the threshold than we can fund, you could use geography for that. And you can also and this is a fantastic thing for the digital catapult because this is how modern data analysis helps. You can do data analysis of, for example, bids for innovate UK smart awards to identify clusters.
Lord David Willetts:And we all love talking about clusters. Identifying a cluster is trickier, but you may find that's interesting. We're getting quite a few bids in on this particular area of applied r and d and they all seem to be coming from this particular geographic area. And as soon as you find that from the pattern of bids coming in, you can then proactively think of other ways in which you could help that area. And it could be that this is the first evidence, first signal.
Lord David Willetts:This would be a great place to locate a catapult.
Jeremy Silver:Yes. I don't know if that sort of research is going on actually within that data. I suspect that, well, certainly under COVID, the level of pressure on the organization that the innovator has been so great. They may not have had time to do that, but it's a that's a really interesting suggestion. And let me ask you something different.
Jeremy Silver:More about now about the the landscape of innovation around the country. Recently, we've seen the creation of the new Council For Science and Technology, which is is going to be chaired by the PM and supported by the newly expanded government office for science and technology under Patrick Vallance. And it seems to be almost a a a new layer of of strategy development that's been created here. How how do you see that working with UKRI, which which, you know, many of us thought had the overall strategy remit?
Lord David Willetts:Yeah. I think there are several angles to that. First of all, when the government announces that it's gonna put more money into r and d, everyone in Whitehall takes notice. And although, speaking as a board member of UKRI, UKRI might think, oh, well, this is should all come to UKRI to spend. Across Whitehall, this is a cookie jar that's been opened.
Lord David Willetts:So every department starts thinking, well, maybe we could have some r and d programs that get money from this commitment. And because one of Britain's other problems for the past few decades has been the shrinkage of departmental spend, leaving only the science budget standing, In many ways, it would be a good thing if if other departments stepped up to the plate and and funded some of the more applied r and d. Health is the one remaining big example of an applied r and d budget in the department. Defense is is second. The rest are very small.
Lord David Willetts:So if you think at the end of the day, there's going to be some kind of applied environmental research coming out of an agricultural research that coming out of DEFRA who are shamelessly cutting their research budgets in the past, then you want a place that coordinates that alongside UKRISPIC. And the second angle, of course, is the security angle. And security, one of the ways in which this has changed a lot in the past years is that the engagement of people on the security side is much greater. They're very interested in exactly what the technology base is, and Britain has historically been quite bad at integrating defense priorities in r and d alongside civil. So I think if this council integrates the security angle with the civil angle and encourages departments to think about growing their own r and d, all of that alongside UKR, then I think we'll gain something.
Jeremy Silver:Really pulling everything together and creating a kind of coherent whole would be extraordinary. I mean, into the mix, of course, a new institution has been created in the form of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, ARIA, as it's been dubbed, which is very focused, very much for sort of high risk, high reward science in of invention. Any thoughts or words of advice you have that takes over the role of Adaria, the CEO role?
Lord David Willetts:I mean, in a way, anything that comes in is a good thing. What I sometimes worry about when I hear about sort of high risk, high return research is if it implies that everywhere else, including Catapults and UKRI, which funds Catapults on some other thing, is kind of terribly risk averse. My view is that that's kind of r and d should also be funded from UKRI, and the we must not get into a sort of caricature picture where we're somehow highly conservative. We should, you know, with our eyes open, ourselves be willing to take risks greater than those which commercial investors might be willing to take. And in fact, I think many of the ARIA freedoms, I hope, will also be enjoyed by other public research agencies.
Lord David Willetts:So it's a very useful precedent. I mean, when the challenge funds were being set up, Innovate UK went off to ARPA to see how they did it and came back with a model for running the challenge funds that was based on ARPA. And whereupon the treasury controls rules slid in and, no, you can't give the person that freedom and, no, you've gotta have lots of supervisory committees, and, no, their pay can't be higher than a 120,000 or whatever it was. So, if it's good enough for Arie, it should be good enough for a few other players as well.
Jeremy Silver:Interesting. And government actually has just issued a consultation on the subject of bureaucracy and research. Are are there areas of bureaucracy in the research system that you you you think we could usefully get rid of without attracting greater risk?
Lord David Willetts:Yeah. I mean, it's always worth, going through this. I think partly and it came up briefly when you referred to catapults working alongside universities. If you've got bodies that are regulated in different ways or whatever, you can have terrible overlaps of different regulatory requirements and also different data collection requirements, and people are completely exasperated if they have multiple regulators and multiple data collections, and that's always something where Whitefield could be pressed to cull things. John Kingman, the outgoing chair of UKRI also made the point that he thought there'd been too much internal bureaucracy, and I agree with that.
Lord David Willetts:That sometimes the process for decisions going between research councils, UKRI, BEIS, Treasury, number 10, Compared with the old structure, this this new one does seem to have the the processes have become too slow and need to be simplified and speeded up.
Jeremy Silver:And after all, you guys are still relatively new organization, but I guess its structure has swollen quite rapidly. So perhaps, yes, you might have thoughts about that. We're getting towards the end. But but during the course of this podcast, I've had really interesting conversations with a number of people about equality, diversity, and inclusion. And really, I think a lot of people still struggle with the sense that in in highly technical areas and technology driven sectors, that there tends to be a sort of a white male domination.
Jeremy Silver:Now I think that there are good signs of that changing to some extent. But is there a role, do you think, that particularly with public funding and universities, government departments, caterpillars, and so on? What's the role that we should be playing to try and make sure these opportunities are available to everyone?
Lord David Willetts:I think, I mean, on that and it is a a very important challenge. I mean, first of all, in on the on the different metrics of diversity, a metric that I think we should we should add is very important, and you referred to it in your generous introduction at the beginning, is generational. If there's an issue with peer review, for example, in academia, I think it is if the peers are indeed your peers, your age group. One of the metrics that I tracked when I was a minister was the number of PI grants going to investigators in their thirties and even forties. It can be a strength of the British system if they think especially if we can nudge it down to people in their 30.
Lord David Willetts:When you've got a bright idea or a smart idea when you're quite young, there's a decent chance you'll get a grant fund to advance it. And it's not the case as in some continental countries where you have to spend 20 years under some head doctor or professor doing his, and it normally is his his research priorities. So age diversity is an import especially when we're talking about science and innovation, because there's very interesting evidence from a guy called David Galensohn in the US that new ideas tend to be particularly associated with people younger. I think that diversity angle is really important, and we should and we should make sure we cover that. On gender, I think the problem is one of the many consequences of early specialization.
Lord David Willetts:Of course, we should try to promote the ideas of science and technology to teenagers, but it's a great pity that people at the age of 16 or even 40 never take crucial decisions that will narrow their options later on. When I think the more we can be studying a wider range of subjects for longer, the better.
Jeremy Silver:And, obviously, that's a topic that you explore in much more detail in your newly re edited book The Pinch, which, I have to say is a new edition of that is very welcome. So I'm sure if people haven't read it, they should go out and purchase multiple copies immediately. Just sticking with the the equality, diversion, and inclusion topic for a minute, because what you say is really interesting and and clearly attitudes amongst younger generations to working with people from more diverse backgrounds, different approaches, and different, neurodiverse characters is something which is becomes almost natural to that generation, but perhaps to ours is still seems like something we have to make an an effort to do. Do you think that we should really use public money even more pointedly to drive that home and to encourage that? Or is there a challenge there in terms of the the the time scale that it has to happen?
Jeremy Silver:I mean, you you were talking about the the choices people need to make at school. Do you think that we just have to accept that we have to evolve this over time because people have to start at an earlier age in order to get there, or is there more that we could be doing now for people in employment now?
Lord David Willetts:Yeah. I think there is more that can be done now. I don't think it's it's entirely a matter of waiting for the sort of long term changes. I think it's complimentary. I I think it is getting a lot better.
Lord David Willetts:And Amanda Solloway, to her credit, is very focused on this, and there can be assumptions about what kind of entrepreneurs are funded. I mean, I do worry that, you know, ensuring gender mix in particular in areas like technology startups where it's quite a challenge. And, of course, there's a very innovative new program, a VC funds focusing particularly on female entrepreneurs. So, yeah, there's a lot more that can be done, and we can't afford the waste of talent and expertise if you don't harvest everyone's ability to make a contribution.
Jeremy Silver:We're nearly at the end, but I always finish this podcast with a slightly less serious question. And that is this, the the world is full of useful innovations, oyster cards, electric cars, a pump to keep your half drunk wine fresh in its bottle. What's your favorite innovation, David?
Lord David Willetts:Oh, my favorite I mean, I don't know about obvious things like the iPhone. Well, I can I can tell you that what I have bought for myself, because my again, my life, I'm rebalancing a bit post COVID, and I'm going to be more down in Haven't, my former constituency and commuting up? I've brought myself a Brompton bicycle. And the the challenge, the ingenuity, it's quite argue, was a triumph of engineering, folding it up and unfolding, which I think there's a character in the BBC comedy series w one, where the evidence is becoming cool as he gets quicker and quicker and folding and unfolding is Brompton. Well, that's an innovation I'm going to be wrestling with over the last few weeks.
Lord David Willetts:I can imagine some quite embarrassingly slow fumbling at Waterloo Station. And I've tried to get it erected, but I hope soon I will be a natural.
Jeremy Silver:Is it an electric Brompton that
Lord David Willetts:you've got? No. No. You've gotta do that proper thing. You've gotta have to
Jeremy Silver:I see. Right. Okay. Okay. Well, we we'll we'll look out for sightings of you wrestling with your Brompton.
Jeremy Silver:And in the meantime, thank you so much for joining us this week. Thank you, David, for sharing all your thoughts today. Thank you, Jeremy.
Lord David Willetts:That's
Jeremy Silver:all for today's Supercharging Innovation podcast. Thanks for listening. Join us again for the next podcast episode, and make sure you subscribe to us on Itunes or Spotify. Other podcast distribution platforms are, of course, also available. Goodbye.