ABSTRACT
The modern world is swept by change. New technologies emerge constantly, new markets are opening up. There are new competitors but also great new opportunities. Our success depends on how well we exploit our most valuable assets: our knowledge, skills and creativity. These are the key to designing high-value goods and services and advanced business practices. They are at the heart of a modern, knowledge-driven economy. This new world challenges business to be innovative and creative, to improve performance continuously, to build new alliances and ventures. But it also challenges governments: to create and execute a new industrial policy.
The Government must promote competition, stimulating enterprise, flexibility and innovation by opening markets. But we must also invest in British capabilities when companies alone cannot: in education, in science and in the creation of a culture of enterprise. And we must promote creative partnerships which help companies: to collaborate for competitive advantage; to promote a long term vision in a world of short term pressures; to benchmark their performance against the best in the world; and to forge alliances with other businesses and with employees.
(Blair 1998)