Holding out for a hero?

The Electronics Innovation and Growth Team’s (EIGT) report published at the end of 2005 depicted a grim future for UK electronics’ unless the industry got its act together. The report found many good things about UK electronics – it is a significant driver of innovation and growth in other sectors of the UK’s economy. It also found UK electronics to be technically capable and facing ‘almost endless opportunities’. On the downside, the EIGT saw a sector that was largely invisible, lacking confidence, unfocused. The report provided a range of contrasting scenarios – ‘peak’ and ‘bleak’. At the extreme downside, the EIGT saw a Government which took no notice of electronics, a country in which innovation had been stifled and where what remained of the industry was still fragmented. This would happen, it asserted, if its recommendations were not implemented. One of the key recommendations was the establishment of an Electronics Leadership Council (ELC) to provide strategic direction for UK electronics. This was duly constituted and has been chaired since day one by Harry Tee, chairman of Dialight.