COVER STORY | DIGITALISATION
RDEIGAIPTIANLG D TIVHIED END
DIGITAL DIVIDEND We all know we need to embrace the opportunities presented by digital
technology, but how do we do it? The Digital Catapult o ers some answers.
When asked if
they’re keen
to embrace
digital
opportunities, most
engineering concerns
would answer in the
af rmative. However,
the problem that
generally arises is how
to actually achieve that.
Where does one start?
What technologies are
appropriate? Who can one
work with?
Answering these questions
advanced digital technology
innovation centre. It drives
the early adoption of
digital technologies to
make UK businesses more
competitive and productive
to grow the country’s
was one of the reasons for the
establishment of the Digital
Catapult. Digital Catapult is the
UK’s leading advanced digital
technology innovation centre. It
drives the early adoption of digital
technologies to make UK businesses
more competitive and productive to
grow the country’s economy.
Since its launch in 2013,
the Digital Catapult has made
signi cant progress in helping
grow the UK’s economy. It has
opened ve centres across the UK,
worked with over 2,500 start-ups
and scale-ups to take their business
to the next level, won over £3.5m
in collaborative R&D bids and
partnered with a number of major
corporates to support their open
innovation work including Visa,
Cisco and PWC. It has also helped
deliver 41 projects and generate
additional contributions of £5m from
across the technology landscape.
It does this in several
ways. The rst is by providing
physical and digital facilities for
experimentation and testing that
would otherwise not be accessible
for smaller companies. Its
innovation programmes drive
collaboration and encourage
use of the facilities. By
bringing together small
companies, corporates,
researchers and
investors, the right
solutions are developed
to solve industry
challenges, increase
productivity and open up
new markets faster.
It also connects
corporations, small businesses
and academic researchers to get
the latest thinking into the heart
of industry and discover new
ways to solve big challenges in
the manufacturing and creative
industries.
“We’ve really done two
different things,” says CEO
Jeremy Silver. “One is to think
about which industrial sectors
to put the most focus on – not
necessarily exclusively, but the
most focus. And on the other hand,
what are the technologies that we
will be working with? When we
did the analysis across what the
opportunities for UK businesses
looked like, there were two sectors
that jumped out in relation to what
you might call a digital opportunity.
One of those is the creative
industries, which are very strong
in the UK, but the other one that
jumped out was manufacturing.
When you look at that sector as a
whole, and you think about what
the digital multiplier would add
up to, it comes out much higher
than anybody else. I think we are
possibly the only organisation
that has decided that the creative
industries and manufacturing
should sit side by side as bedfellows
in some respects, because
there are actually all sorts
of interesting crossovers
between them. So that’s one
way that we think about the
world.”
The other process the Catapult
has gone through is to think in terms
of the technologies themselves and
focus on three key areas. These are:
arti cial intelligence and machine
learning; future networks; and
immersive technology such as VR
and AR.
Silver adds: “Obviously, digital
means everything and nothing
these days. But for us, the focus
is on the more advanced and
digital technologies, which are
also the most hyped and the most
susceptible to the Gartner hype
cycle. At the same time, they’re also
potentially the ones that need more
testing and more proving.”
Naturally, some of this is in
association with academia. “In
arti cial intelligence and machine
learning, the UK’s strength is its
deep tech sector, with people
coming not just from Imperial and
Cambridge, but also from centres
like Newcastle and Edinburgh as
well,” says Silver.
Again, when it comes to
immersive technologies, the UK’s
strength lies in the application
of these technologies. “We
have a focus, too, on immersive
technologies like virtual reality,”
says Silver. “Here the UK’s strength
is not in the hardware, or the
headsets or controllers, it’s in the
content and in the applications
that can be brought to bear and all
sorts of interesting opportunities.
In industry, they’re not just in
entertainment. And we’re already
Digital Catapult
is the UK’s leading
economy
JSEILRVEEMRY
Jeremy Silver is
CEO of Digital
Catapult. He is
an author, angelinvestor
and
entrepreneur
specialising
in virtual and
augmented
reality, AI, music
and the creative
industries.
10 WWW.EUREKAMAGAZINE.CO.UK | NOVEMBER 2019
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