Madingley Lecture - The world of new ideas

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Professor Sir Mike Gregory CBE FREng will explore recent developments in 'ecosystems' for innovation and production, and emerging opportunities for Cambridge and beyond.

New ideas - who has them, who develops them, who uses them? Cambridge has a strong history of developing new ideas but are we making the most of them? Globalisation has made it easy for ideas - as well as goods - to travel easily around the world. This has brought increased standards of living for many but by no means everyone.

There is clearly more to be done to extend the benefits of new ideas to other cultures, as well as our own, but without long term damage to the planet. We need better ways to accelerate the adoption and exploitation of new ideas locally, nationally and internationally. That means better connections between the potentially different 'cultures' of the people have ideas and those who develop and use them.

Professor Sir Mike Gregory retired as Head of the Manufacturing and Management Division of the University of Cambridge Engineering Department and of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) in September 2015. Following an early career in the industry, he was the founder member of the team which established the IfM in 1998. Linking science, engineering, management and policy, and integrating education, research and practice, the IfM now has over 230 staff and research students, as well as 100 undergraduate and masters students.

Mike Gregory's work is closely linked with industry and government and he has published in the areas of manufacturing strategy, technology management, international manufacturing and manufacturing policy. External activities have included membership of various government and institutional committees. He served as Executive Director of the Cambridge MIT Institute from 2005-2008 and was Springer Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley in 2008/9. Mike is a Fellow and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering and served as Acting Director of the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) in 2015/16. He now chairs the Babbage International Policy Forum and is President of the Cambridge Society for the Application of Research (CSAR).