Centre for Industry & Government

Over the past decades the nature of manufacturing has fundamentally changed. The distinction between manufacturing and services is becoming increasingly unclear and all activities in the manufacturing value chain – from research through production to distribution and service provision – are moving across geographical and organisational boundaries.

The nature of the business-government relationship is also changing. Policymakers are being forced to reassess their models for intervention and find it increasingly difficult to understand and appropriately support industrial development. The credit crisis of 2008 brought these issues into sharp relief, removing many of the certainties surrounding the stability of developed economies, the transition to a post-industrial economy, and the role of government in providing support for industry.

Government and company efforts to understand how to achieve growth under these new conditions are undermined by a lack of research to support strategy and policy development. Over the past twenty years little attention has been paid to industrial structures, the role of production, and industrial policy in developed economies.

The Centre for Industry and Government aims to provide research to underpin developments in industrial and innovation policy, as well as working directly with governments, in order to support ongoing efforts to improve economic growth. The Centre brings together a diverse set of disciplines which are required to address these challenging issues, from economics to policy analysis. Starting from an understanding of technology development and how manufacturing firms operate, we are developing:

• a better understanding of the role of production in companies and in economies
• new frameworks to capture the blending of manufacturing and service-based activities
• new options for policymakers to support industrial growth.

CIG Brochure

Download PDF file [500k]