Professor Ken Board: Inspiring Wealth Creators
One of the key issues facing the country today is the need for strong export-led economic growth. The demands on the public purse are relentless and ever increasing. The coming together of three particular facts make this more urgent.
They are: an increasing population, people living longer with greater demands for healthcare and the requirement to spend more on defence.
Over a period of some twenty-four years in the USA, the net number of jobs created by newly started companies exceeded those generated by all established companies in every single one of those years. Moreover, this number was relatively unaffected by downturns in the economy, unlike those treated or lost by the established ones.
More generally in any context where aging and decline is involved, replenishment and new growth is an imperative for long term survival.
In 2023 and following retirement as head of electrical engineering at Swansea, I discovered that one of my PhD students, Dr Darwish, had formed his own company in Silicon Valley. I wrote his story and subsequently found thirty-eight stories about enterprise all linked to Swansea and the University. This culminated in an Amazon- published book called ’Inspiring Wealth Creators’.
Eleven of these occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were based on metals production. They led to Swansea having world class exporting companies, in copper, tinplate, nickel and other metals. The rest, all engineering-related entrepreneurs, have their enterprises linked, directly or indirectly, to semiconductors and what they led to. Some thirty companies have been formed by them
These Swansea graduates, sponsored over a hundred of the books that are being donated to schools and colleges in Wales to inspire youngsters to follow similar paths.
Each of the stories told are inspiring and show how the founders had the innate qualities to overcome obstacles and to persist in their belief in what they had conceived. These qualities cannot be taught but can be enhanced greatly when they have an engineering background that helps enable solutions to technical issues that need to be addressed and solved if they are to be successful.
Two extraordinary outcomes were discovered or activated following the publishing of the book that were not known about at the start of the process.
First is the development of what today is the foremost power and compound semiconductor activity in the UK. This Cluster consists of a number of specialist companies working in these areas enhanced by the involvement of two Universities, Swansea and Cardiff. More details may be found at www.csconnected.com
On a personal note, it gave me great personal satisfaction that Dr Darwish, who prompted the writing of his story together with the others, was also instrumental in getting the company that acquired his own startup, Vishay, to purchase the Newport wafer foundry, now known as Vishay Newport. They play a key part in the Cluster project thus completing the circle.
The second outcome was the positive response of those written about to the request for them to sponsor a number of the books containing their stories to go into schools in order to help inspire youngsters to do the same over a hundred sponsorships were received and around fifty have been placed in schools in South and north Wales with this in mind.
Sixteen copies were presented to the Engineering Education Scheme Wales (EESW) scheme winners at the recent event held in Swansea University when four hundred A-level students attended together with teachers and representatives of companies who supported the projects undertaken.
More are available and I would be happy to donate these to anyone interested. See www.inspiringwealthcreators.co.uk
