Abstract
On the 23rd of June 2016, 51.9% of the eligible electorate voted in favour of the UK leaving the European Union. Earlier this month, the UK government triggered Article 50 of the Treaty of the EU that marks the beginning of the 2-year formal negotiations to withdraw from the Union.
In many engineering group discussions since the theme remains the same: Uncertainty. What follows the decision to exit the EU? What are the risks; what are the strengths? How can the new relationship with the EU affect UK Innovation?
Where should the government focus to maintain and further enhance its reputation for innovation?
Where will funding for research programmes come from? And how will SMEs be able to access and scale up within the European Single Market?
To answer these questions we invited Sir Vince Cable, the man who connected his term in office under the coalition government of 2010-2015 with establishing the Catapult network of innovation centres that linked research with business investment.
