未来十年几乎注定将成为一个世纪以来科学突破最多的十年。问题在于，目前在人工智能、量子计算和生物学领域取得的进展，能否攻克癌症、找到治疗或预防痴呆症的方法，以及克服日益严重的抗生素耐药性？我们能否找到可持续的方式来满足能源需求，同时保护环境？人工智能能否改变我们提供教育、医疗和社会护理的方式，造福数百万人，并推动现代制造业实力的增强？英国的发明家、投资者和实业家在开发这些变革性技术方面能发挥什么作用？
The coming 10 years are almost certain to be the decade that sees the greatest scientific breakthroughs in a century. The question is whether advances now under way in AI, quantum computing and biology can address cancer, find ways to treat or prevent dementia, and overcome the growing resistance to antibiotics. Can we find sustainable ways to address our energy needs and protect the environment at the same time? Can AI transform the way we deliver education, health and social care to the benefit of millions, as well as advance modern manufacturing strength? And what role can Britain’s inventors, investors and industrialists play in developing these transformative technologies?
虽然美国和中国是世界公认的创新强国，但英国也拥有巨大的优势，正如今天在曼彻斯特举行的“创新国家大会”所听到的那样，首相安迪·伯纳姆将在会上致辞。英国拥有世界前10名大学中的4所、前100名中的16所，其中5所位列欧洲衍生公司（基于大学研究产生的知识产权创办的初创企业）前10强。英国人口不足世界总人口的1%，却产出了世界6%的研究论文、近9%的引用量和12%的高被引研究。
While the US and China are the world’s obvious innovation powerhouses, the UK also has enormous assets, as the Innovation Nation Conference in Manchester addressed by the prime minister, Andy Burnham, will hear today. We are home to four of the world’s top 10 universities and 16 of the top 100, five of which are in Europe’s top 10 for spin-outs, startups based on intellectual property produced through a university’s research. With less than 1% of the world’s population, the UK produces 6% of the world’s research papers, nearly 9% of citations and 12% of the most highly cited research.
我们的研究专长是我们处于近期发明前沿的众多原因之一：从预测蛋白质行为的AlphaFold，到病毒载体疫苗技术，再到能像放射科医生一样可靠地检测癌症的人工智能。英国已经处于人工智能、量子计算和合成生物学的交汇点。那么问题来了：既然英国引领了第一次工业革命，为什么不能再次成为世界伟大的创新国家？
Our research expertise is one of the many reasons we have been at the forefront of recent inventions: from AlphaFold, which predicts how proteins behave, to viral-vector vaccine technology and AI that detects cancer as reliably as radiologists. Britain already sits at the intersection of AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology. The question then is: why, having led the first Industrial Revolution, should the UK not be the world’s great innovation nation once again?
我们知道公众具有创业精神，并支持这一愿景。为本周会议进行的最新民调显示，75%的人同意创新对于创造英国经济增长至关重要。
We know the public have an entrepreneurial spirit, and back this vision. New polling for this week’s conference finds that 75% of people agree that innovation is essential for creating UK economic growth.
但令人失望的是，只有36%的英国公众认为该国是科学领域的世界领导者。是时候让创新成为政府政策和政府正在准备的十年计划的重中之重了。如果我们能将英国的创新强度提升至瑞典或日本的水平，从长远来看，每个家庭将受益5000英镑（据我测算），且随着研发投资增加转化为生产率提升，国民收入将每年增加1500亿英镑。而如果按“我们的苏格兰未来”为苏格兰提出的就业计划规模在全英国推行，将意味着全英创造约300万个新就业岗位。
But it is disappointing that only 36% of the British public believes the country is a world leader in science. It is time for innovation to move to the forefront of government policy and the 10-year plan the government is preparing. If we were to raise Britain to Swedish or Japanese levels of innovation intensity we would, over time, leave every household £5,000 better off (according to my calculations), and increase our national income by £150bn a year as higher investment in research and development feeds through into productivity. And a jobs plan on the scale that Our Scottish Future has proposed for Scotland would mean about 3m new jobs across the UK.
我们可以确定需要克服的主要障碍。虽然英国擅长创办初创企业和衍生企业，但我们将初创企业转型为成长型企业的速度较慢，将成长型企业转型为全球成功案例的速度更慢。按人均计算，美国拥有10亿美元估值公司的数量是英国的两倍，拥有100亿美元以上估值公司的数量几乎是英国的三倍。即使我们在国内实现了规模扩张，四分之三的风险投资也来自海外。
We can identify the major hurdles to overcome. While the UK is good at startups and spin-outs, we are slow to turn startups into scale-ups, and even slower to turn scale-ups into global success stories. Per head of population, the US has double the number of $1bn companies and nearly three times as many $10bn-plus companies than the UK. And even when we do scale up at home, three-quarters of venture capital investment comes from overseas.
扭转这一局面需要政府持续解决创新过程中不可避免产生的瓶颈问题。今天会议上来自面向未来的企业的演讲者将阐述我们需要考虑的措施。这些措施将涵盖确保企业能从英国投资者处获得成长所需资金、为投资者提供新激励、建立公私合作伙伴关系——如德国、法国和意大利所做的那样——由英国商业银行和国家财富基金提供资本支持。竞争政策必须偏向新进入者而非既得利益者，并与有利的税收制度保持一致，例如通过惠及各类规模企业的研发税收抵免。
Turning this around will require a government to keep tackling the bottlenecks that are inevitably created from innovation. Speakers from future-facing companies at today’s conference will set out the steps that we need to consider. These will range from making sure firms can access the money they need to grow from UK investors, to new incentives for investors, to public-private partnerships – as happens in Germany, France and Italy – capitalised by the British Business Bank and the national wealth fund. Competition policy must favour new entrants against vested interests and be aligned with a favourable tax regime, such as through research and development credits that favour companies of all sizes.
会议的研究已确定了127个创新集群，覆盖英国的每个地区和国家，其中许多如果我们愿意为其提供长期支持——包括基础设施、技能培训以及英国研究与创新（UK Research and Innovation）的研发支持——就能取得成功。为了利用这一潜力，需要将更多权力下放，使市长和地区当局能够在当地行动，同时确保能够进入全球市场。
Research for the conference has identified 127 innovative clusters covering every region and nation of the UK, many of which will succeed if we are willing to give long-term support to the infrastructure, skills training and research and development support from UK Research and Innovation they need to grow. In order to harness this potential, more power needs to be devolved to enable mayors and regional authorities to act locally while ensuring access to global markets.
英国并不缺乏天才或重要资产。每个国家，包括我们自己，都必须更加努力地寻找其“失落的爱因斯坦”——那些来自低收入地区、拥有才华却尚未获得展示创意天赋机会的年轻人。我们现在需要的是建立一条希望链，将所有人连接到智力发现与应用、初创企业与成长型企业以及全球领导力——所有这些都围绕共同的国家使命。
Britain does not lack genius or great assets. Every nation, including ours, must do more to find its “lost Einsteins” – the young people in lower-income areas who have the talent but not yet the opportunity to show their creative genius. What we need now is to create a chain of hope that connects all people to intellectual discovery and deployment, to startups and scale-ups, and to global leadership – all aligned around a shared national purpose.
六十四年前，约翰·F·肯尼迪宣布美国将领导一项全国性努力，率先登月。但太空计划并非他的首选。他希望有一个全国性的项目，让每个人都能感受到参与感，并透露如果能找到一个在地球上同样具有激励全国使命的项目，他宁愿选择那个项目。
Sixty-four years ago, John F Kennedy declared that the US would lead a nationwide effort to be first on the moon. But the space initiative was not his first choice. He had wanted a national project that everybody could feel part of, and revealed he would have preferred to have chosen a project on Earth – if he could have found one with the same power to inspire a national mission that the whole population could enthusiastically embrace.
今天，我们可以选择成为创新大国。美国肯尼迪曾说：“这一代人无意在即将到来的时代的浪潮中沉没。”而这一代英国人也绝无意在人工智能时代加速发展的过程中被甩在身后。今天由首相在曼彻斯特主导举办的这场活动——曼彻斯特本身就是一座创新之城——将传递一个明确的信息：我们志在成为全球先锋；不是因为，正如肯尼迪所说，这很容易做到，而是尽管这充满挑战。
Today, we can choose to be the innovation nation. “This generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age,” said Kennedy of the US. And this generation of Britons has no intention of being left behind as the age of AI accelerates. Today’s event, spearheaded by the prime minister in Manchester – itself a city of innovation – will send a message that we mean to be in the global vanguard; not because, as Kennedy said, it is easy to do, but even though it is hard.
因为当前的挑战在于，我们不仅要发明未来，还必须投资未来、制造未来，并在可能的情况下，让未来真正属于英国本土。戈登·布朗于2007年至2010年担任英国首相。
For the challenge now is to do more than invent the future. We must invest in it, manufacture it and, wherever possible, own it here in Britain. Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010