The role of early-stage testing in hi-tech product development came under sharp focus recently with the withdrawal of an e-reader before it had even hit the shops.

Many companies
can find the costs of developing prototypes and working examples of their products an inhibiting factor. The process of taking an idea from conception to production is expensive, and sometimes out of the reach of a smaller operation.

Some organisations, however, are trying to help overcome these barriers. In the USA, a company called Flextronics offers other firms the use of its electronics manufacturing processes, saving those firms the cost of setting up their own facilities.

In Germany, the long-standing Fraunhofer Society works with researchers, scientists and independent businesses to develop products that might otherwise prove too costly for any one organisation.

The Fraunhofer model led to the creation, in the 1990s, of the now-ubiquitous MP3 audio format.

In the North East, the Printable Electronics Technology Centre (PETEC), based at NETPark in County Durham, is playing a crucial role in the development of future products.

PETEC is the UK’s national design, development and prototyping facility where many companies from across Europe test and develop electronic prototypes. It has a crucial role to play in helping the plastic electronics industry, which is in its infancy, to develop and grow.

Companies in the sector have been making use of PETEC for some time. For example, Thorn Lighting has used the product development capabilities of the centre to make strides with its TOPDRAWER project, which has just received funding from the Government for its next stage.

The withdrawal of the Que e-reader by British company Plastic Logic is said to be down to the success of rival products like Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad, which made it commercially unviable.

But the Que was one of the stars of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, generating much excitement as a result of its use of innovative plastic technologies.

Plastic Logic had spent years developing ink technology that allows semiconductors to be printed on plastic rather than based on silicon, which made the Que simple to use, easy to read and lightweight.

Plastic Logic says that the withdrawal has not dented its drive, and that it is moving on to develop a second generation e-reader.

Places like PETEC exist to bring these exciting technologies on.

:: Stewart Watkins is managing director of the County Durham Development Company.

The North East has always been an innovative place. For the last two centuries people have been inspired in this region to create some of the most famous inventions in history – the steam locomotive, the match, and the light bulb.
Last week we saw figures which proved what many of us already knew – that the North East is still an incredibly innovative region. According to figures released by the British Library, the North East has generated more patents, trademarks, and design rights per person, per pound invested in research and development over the past ten years.
While much of the time from 2000 to now was a period of growth for the UK, the last couple of years have been challenging to say the least. That the North East can still demonstrate this level of creative output is fantastic news for the region. It’s a vindication of the investments – both public and private – made in the North East’s science and technology companies in the last decade.
Companies like Thorn Lighting in Spennymoor are doing exactly this. Thorn is pushing the boundaries of Joseph Swann’s original vision – the incandescent light bulb. The company’s latest developments in the field of solid state lighting will help to reduce energy consumption in commercial buildings. This R&D project is being supported by the Government through its commitment to plastic electronics technology.
Other green technologies are coming out of glass specialists Romag, such as PowerGlaz solar glass, an important element in the development of renewable energy sources. One of Romag’s latest innovations, the PowerPark photovoltaic charging canopy, aligns perfectly with the North East’s electric car developments – led by Nissan, which is working closely with other companies and training centres in the region.
Kromek, based at the North East Technology Park (NETPark) in Sedgefield, is a spin out from Durham University and is a pioneer in developing X-ray imaging for the medical, security and defence markets. Ground-breaking technology that is making a massive contribution to our and safety and that has seen Kromek grow rapidly from a two-man operation into an organisation employing nearly 50 people.
Another North East company, FS Design, has helped develop a fingerprint reader with the technology capable of verifying a person’s age. This device, which could prove very useful in shops, bars and clubs, has the potential to become as ubiquitous as Chip and Pin machines.
With such trailblazing companies in the region, it’s no wonder that the North East has topped the list of creative output in the UK. Spending on R&D is generally recognised as a key method of stimulating economic growth, so we need to ensure that we produce the best possible return in the future – and these figures show that the North East is now leading the way.

There was welcome news this week with the announcement that County Durham telecoms supply firm Filtronic is investing for the future with its planned acquisition of Leeds-based Isotek. This made me think about some of the other events that have shaped the North East’s technology sector over recent years.
The science and technology industry is a fast-moving one. There’s always something new around the corner, and it goes without saying that companies working in this field have to be able to adapt very quickly.
This has been even more evident over the past two years, when the credit crunch and the recession have tightened the belts of many. When one company pulls back on its activities, it can affect other, smaller companies further down the line – but it can also open doors for others.
The business community applauded the arrival of Fujitsu in 1989, heralding the development of a new industry for County Durham and the North East. Fujitsu was closely followed by Siemens and Atmel, bringing some of the world’s major semiconductor manufacturers to the region.
We were disappointed when global forces lead to the closure of the Fujitsu plant in 1998, along with Siemens in the same year. Atmel continued until 2007, which made the North East home to expertise in the semiconductor production industry for nearly two decades.
These companies produced a workforce that was highly-skilled in a specific field, and that kind of expertise brings with it further benefits.
The presence of such an impressive facility attracted Filtronic to the area when they bought the Fujitsu plant in 1999 – and access to a ready-made, skilled workforce was another deciding factor.
When Filtronic in turn faced challenges in the late 2000s, RF Microdevices was attracted to the area, taking over the Newton Aycliffe facility and its established workforce.
The initial decision to attract companies such as Fujitsu and Siemens has, in the long run, assisted with the development of other high-tech companies in the area, such as those making their home at NETPark in Sedgefield. NETPark acts as a beacon for cutting-edge companies to locate to the area, creating a hub for the kind of skills required for these high-tech businesses
The position we’re in now could not have been achieved without the events of the last twenty years. While the high-tech manufacturing sector in the North East has grown immeasurably in that time, its roots lie in that early Fujitsu decision.

For well over a century, the North East region and traditional industries have gone hand in hand in the public consciousness.

But big news stories like last week’s announcement that Nissan’s Sunderland plant will start manufacturing the innovative new LEAF electric car demonstrate the degree to which this is all changing.

For although our region has developed an unrivalled skills base in the manufacturing sector, companies operating in these sectors are forever looking to the future, embracing and adopting innovative new techniques to ensure they remain ahead of the competition.

The tremendous news that Nissan’s Sunderland plant will be one of only three locations in the world to develop these new electric cars underlines the outstanding capabilities of the Sunderland workforce and the high regard in which they’re held by the company.

It also reinforces the region’s growing reputation in the green and renewable sector with a whole raft of recent developments in the North East including the announcement last month of a £25m green energy factory on Tyneside producing wind turbines.

For it is only by embedding innovation in the manufacturing sector that we will be capable of solving the problems we face today and those we’ll face in the years to come. The time was that the greener solution to driving your car was to ride a bike, not always a practical alternative on long journeys. And yet now electric cars are becoming a very real option and look likely to hit our streets in a big way in the coming years.

What is more, scientists and technicians in the US are starting to develop techniques that could enable electric car batteries to store ten times more charge allowing an electric car to run for three to four hours. (These techniques are being tested by companies like 3M and Sanyo who are already working on advanced technologies for electric car batteries.)

Outlined in the annual report entitled Innovations That Could Change the Way You Manufacture list produced by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the development tackles one of the major drawbacks and concerns about electric vehicles that have hindered their development to date.

The report also examines the way sustainable materials are being readily integrated into the manufacturing process. Ford Motor Company has been using soy-foam seats in a number of its models since 2008.

All of these elements prove the way in which manufacturing companies have and must continue to explore innovative solutions both for the good of their own futures as well as to solve global problems like reducing carbon emissions.

The North East is already storming ahead in this regard and we must ensure we capitalise on this momentum and help to create a varied and robust regional economy for the future.

Crime has long been a subject that has fascinated and repelled our society in equal measure. Since the nineteenth century when characters like Bill Sykes and Sherlock Holmes took hold of the collective consciousness, we have been intrigued by crime and the police and detectives that help to fight it.

It was at this time that fingerprints were first used to identify and convict criminals and these principles have remained an integral part of our legal system ever since.

However fingerprint technology has developed a long way from the ink pads of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nowadays a fingerprint can be analysed to give details of the minutiae of a person’s life – from what they had for breakfast to whether they’ve taken any illegal substances in the past few hours.

One company involved at this cutting edge of fingerprint technology is ROAR Particles. Based at the North East Technology Park (NETPark) in Sedgefield, ROAR Particles works in the field of nanotechnology and has the capability to determine from a single fingerprint whether the person smokes, takes drugs or has handled any substances that might indicate their involvement in criminal activity.

In addition to the obvious security applications of this technology, it could also help in the diagnosis of a number of diseases and conditions including diabetes.

Another North East company, FS Design, has helped develop a finger print reader with the technology capable of verifying a person’s age. This device which could prove very useful in shops, bars and clubs, has the potential to become as ubiquitous as Chip and Pin machines.

A member of NETPark’s online community, NETPark Net, FS Design is part of wider scientific network and is able to tap into the resources and facilities offered at NETPark including any workshops or seminars that may be relevant to its work.

The fact that so many cutting edge scientific breakthroughs take existing practices and modify, develop or take a different approach to them to find new, improved solutions to society’s problems, demonstrates the importance of dialogue within the scientific community, for by sharing ideas science can move forward to tackle new problems.

NETPark and NETPark Net both provide this forum for discussion and are fast becoming hubs for companies working at the cutting edge. I am confident that science and technology will continue to play a major role in tackling society’s most challenging problems, crime being just one of them. By adopting innovative solutions to these problems we have a greater chance of solving them for the future.

‘The future’s bright’ according to one famous ad campaign. But if climate scientists are to be believed it’s not looking too bright for any of us.

Whether or not you believe the various conspiracy stories regarding climate research work that have been circulating in recent months, what is clear is that we must start to take better care of our planet or risk losing it altogether.

For we are facing problems that are not going to go away. Today’s young people are likely to be living in a world affected by increasingly serious environmental issues.

And for these reasons it is essential we engage them in the climate debate today.

An initiative called ‘Recharging the Earth’ was launched in County Durham this week to get young people thinking about the way they live their lives and about making more sustainable lifestyle choices for the future of the planet.

A collaboration between electronics giant SANYO and the region’s fastest growing science park, the North East Technology Park (NETPark), Recharging the Earth challenges schools to collect as many batteries as they can for a massive recycling scheme. The competition will also see senior and junior school pupils team up to create two pieces of work, one reflecting where the planet will be 25 years from now if we make more sustainable choices and the other reflecting where we’ll be if we don’t.

I have no doubt that some inspiring creative work will come out of the competition. It’s important to recognise the valuable contribution that young people can make to the wider environmental debate. They will inherit the world we leave for them so it’s essential we have their input today.

Much of the work to repair and reverse the damage we’ve wreaked on the planet will fall to the scientists who are already looking for new and innovative ways to tackle these problems.

As home to some of the most cutting edge, innovative companies in the region, NETPark is already heavily involved in this debate.

It hosted the Solar Flair conference last year which attracted some of the leading scientists from around the world in the field of photovoltaics which looks at the conversion of solar energy into electricity. Building on the success of this first conference, it is hoped that a similar event can be held later this year.

The Recharging the Earth initiative is part of a wider programme to reach out to the next generation of scientists, to excite them about the opportunities in the field and particularly those available at NETPark.

This kind of work to help develop the scientists of the future will be absolutely crucial if we are to tackle the problems that have been created today by developing a strong, vibrant scientific community for tomorrow.

The Cabinet’s recent visit to the North East caused quite a flurry in the region, not least on the pages of our North East newspapers.

But the true value of the visit lies in the fact that it highlighted some of the key issues of our region casting a spotlight on many of the exciting new projects that are transforming our region’s economy for the future. The fact that it landed on the same day as the fateful Corus decision no doubt emphasised to ministers the depth of feeling on the closure but as a whole I am sure the visit showed how manufacturing is alive and well in the region and in a strong position for the future.

The launch of a £25m green energy factory, the first in the UK to build offshore wind turbines, demonstrated the North East’s position in driving forward the green and renewable energy agenda.

And Alistair Darling’s visit to Thorn Lighting in Spennymoor, County Durham showed the Chancellor a great example of a manufacturing company embracing innovation to develop next generation lighting.

The company is looking at revolutionary new ways to light our lives in the future. Crowned Factory of the Year 2009 at the Best Factory Awards, Thorn’s Spennymoor facility is proof that manufacturing has a positive and exciting future in our region.

Like Thorn, all companies must be prepared to innovate, look to and embrace the latest scientific and technological developments to prepare for a future in an increasingly competitive international marketplace.

When the company built its new manufacturing plant 16 months ago it chose to stay in Spennymoor rather than transferring abroad which demonstrates the faith that Thorn and its parent company Zumtobel have in the region and its assets.

For the North East is not only a centre for traditional manufacturing but is fast developing a name for itself in the most cutting edge sectors and industries that are set to form an important part of the regional and national economy in the future.

Centres like the New and Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) leading the way in low carbon generation technologies, and the North East Technology Park (NETPark) a centre for some of the most cutting edge science and technology companies in the country, are all helping build the region’s reputation for new technologies.

So, if the Cabinet has taken one thing away from its visit to the North East I hope it is that the North East is a region that is looking to the future; one that is working at the forefront of scientific and technological innovation and embracing the newest technological advances to ensure our industries are ready for tomorrow.

Going through some old newspapers at the weekend I came across an ad from 2001. It was from a discount retailer and in loud red letters told of a laptop going for the bargain price of just £1,200!

As a basic laptop with less than impressive memory capacity I was struck by how expensive, not how cheap it was.

Over the years not only has technology become faster, smarter, and very often smaller, but it has also become a lot cheaper and more readily accessible to the average person in the street.

Not so many years ago much technology was the preserve of the rich and something like a laptop or a mobile phone was a major purchase.

And yet now technology has become so integral to our lives that more and more often we are turning to it to help us solve daily challenges.

One amazing story I heard recently came out of the devastation and horror of the Haiti earthquake. American filmmaker Dan Woolley was trapped when his hotel in Port-au-Prince collapsed. Using a medical app he had downloaded to his iPhone, Mr Woolley treated his injuries, setting his alarm to go off every 20 minutes to stop him going into shock and even using the phone’s camera to map his surroundings and help him find a safer place to await rescue.

Thankfully this is not an everyday story but it proves in the most extreme way, the versatility of the technology available to all of us.

What is more, technology used to be largely used in specialist fields with little crossover into other sectors. Nowadays the technology developed for one sector could soon be used for a whole range of applications. Take sat-nav technology which was developed by the US Air Force and is now ubiquitous among the general public.

The Centre for Advanced Instrumentation (CfAI) based at the North East Technology Park (NETPark) in Sedgefield has done work that is a classic example of this crossover.

With an international reputation for its development of astronomy instrumentation, many of the techniques used have spin-off applications. The technique of adaptive optics for example, developed for use in telescopes is assisting in studies of the human eye and helping early diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as diabetes.

So the technological advances being made at the cutting edge of the science and technology sector today could soon filter down into our daily lives and help us in ways we can’t even imagine.

Space tour guides, weather modification police and avatar managers are just a few of the jobs our children could be doing in 20 years time if a new report is to be believed.

Tomorrow’s economy is likely to look radically different to that of today, and the report, conducted by future researchers from Fast Future for the campaign Science: [So what? So everything], painted a vivid picture of what that future could look like.

It outlined how the economy is likely to be driven by future trends such as population growth, climate change and the continuing digital revolution, leading to a whole range of new employment sectors and jobs, from climate change reversal specialists to waste data handlers who will dispose of our electronic mess.

The implications may sound mind-boggling and the stuff of science fiction, but the fact that a number of these jobs already exist, indicate they may not be as way-out as they may first sound.

But whether or not these predictions are entirely correct, we must recognise that to prepare for the challenges of tomorrow we must capitalise on the scientific and technological breakthroughs being made today.

One of Europe’s leading science and technology parks is based here in the North East so we are fortunate to be at the very heart of this revolution.

The North East Technology Park (NETPark) in Sedgefield is home to some of the most progressive, cutting edge companies in the country.

But to ensure that our region remains at the forefront of this technological revolution it will be essential to engage with and excite the next generation about the work being done there.

In the coming months NETPark will be increasingly looking to work more closely with local communities and schools to show the work that is being done on their doorsteps and show them ways they can be involved in its future.

With science and technology set to play a major part in our future economy, we must ensure the region is able to capitalise on its potential to develop in this sector. NETPark is a valuable asset that we must exploit if we are to feel its full benefit in our region.

So whether or not tomorrow’s job market will be filled with vertical farmers and memory augmentation surgeons I couldn’t really say. What I am confident about is that the North East will be well prepared for whatever the future has to throw at us.

Although Mr Brown is keeping the actual date a closely guarded secret, the opening shots of the election campaigns have been fired. As ever, this will be a hard fought contest but whoever emerges as the next Government will face challenges virtually unparalleled in recent years.

Perhaps more than ever the political parties will have to be circumspect about their promises, spending only on those things their party feels are absolutely essential. There will not be much money to play with.

And where will science and technology feature on this list of spending priorities?

At first it might seem less important when compared to the NHS, armed services or education, and yet science and technology is being used extensively in all of these areas and if substantial cuts are made in its funding, it will undoubtedly impact on these other core services.

It is essential that science is not forgotten in amongst the scrabble for funds. Not only is science playing an increasingly important role in our economic sustainability and future growth, but as global leader in a number of new technologies, the UK is attracting significant attention and investment from abroad.

A recent debate hosted by the Campaign for Science & Engineering (CaSE) in London heard from speakers from the three main political parties on their post-election plans for the science sector.

Lord Drayson, Adam Afriyie MP and Dr Evan Harris MP were all grilled on the commitment their parties would make to the science sector for the coming months and years.

All parties were keen to emphasise their backing for scientific research work but concrete pledges from any of the parties seemed to be in short supply especially when it came to funding.

It is essential the science and technology sector is given the attention and financial resources it needs if it is to tackle many of the world’s greatest challenges – from climate change, to security, to disease.

In the UK the science and technology sector is growing apace and in our region it has the potential to form a significant part of our economy in future years.

Not only do we have the North East Technology Park (NETPark), one of the UK’s fastest growing science parks, with PETEC, the UK flagship facility for the development of printable electronics, but we also have significant resources and expertise in the renewable energy sector that could mark the North East as a national and even international leader in some fields.

The build up to the General Election will inevitably lead to promises from politicians on all fronts, including those we care most about such as education and health. But I would urge people not to discount the importance of political commitment to science, both for the economic wellbeing of the country, for the reputation of the UK and its ability to attract funding from abroad, and to help us tackle so many of the other challenges we face.