R&D is at the heart of disruptive technologies that have the potential to transform entire industries and create high-quality jobs.  Government has to continue to fund hubs and clusters where global companies can be founded and raise the ceiling of aspiration for tomorrow’s innovators

As well as pouring my energy into the business I co-founded, Owlstone Nanotech, I’m a keen, albeit atrocious, runner. Earlier this year, Roger Bannister celebrated the 60th anniversary of breaking the four minute mile. Before 6th May 1954, the vast majority of people thought it impossible. Within two months of Bannister’s success, two runners had come in under the time. Ten years later, a seventeen year old school boy named Jim Ryun had run a mile in less than the magic four minutes. Physically, nothing had changed in these athletes over that time. But there had been a mental shift, a change in perception in what they believed to be possible. It was this that allowed them to succeed.