About 20 years ago the Principal of Swansea University was a man named Clarkson; he was an Engineer by discipline but running a large university was a huge administrative work load and he was a most impressive Principal. All the more surprising when he told me that he ran a small Engineering Consultancy in the private sector to which he devoted a set amount of time and had done so throughout his long academic career. Why, I asked him, what was the point? He said it kept him in touch with the ‘real’ world of engineering.

His lifetime knowledge and experience of his subject was constantly refreshed and widened by this regular contact with reality.Too many academics, he told me, spend 30 years or more teaching a subject as they mastered it as PHD students.They are blinkered by their academic isolation from a changing world. This way, he said, I take the blinkers off.

That, to me, is what Inside Welsh Industry is all about. Taking the blinkers off. Moving outside our own experience to grasp the experience of others, not necessarily the same as us but beset by similar challenges and opportunities, problems and pitfalls.

But of course it is not an academic exercise. All our visitors when they sign up must open their minds, at least to the POSSIBILITY of change. The visitor scrutinises the hosts best practice and what he or she is searching for is something to emulate. More often than not there is something to arrest the attention.‘How would it be if we tried that? Maybe in a different way, maybe with a different emphasis, but it works for them – it should work for us.’

Wales Quality Centre has now a new mission.We want industry and business in Wales to Raise the Game, to Reach for the Stars. A world class private and public sector. Why not? We can do it through continuous innovation and enhanced competitiveness, and Inside Welsh Industry opens the door to both those things.

Vincent Kane, Chairman,
Wales Quality Centre