Britain's creativity The Japanese government's trade and industry department, MITI, found that over 40% of the world's commercially important innovations made in the past 50 years came from the UK (along with more than 70% of the major innovations created since the start of the Industrial Revolution). This is a stunning record of achievement. But we are poor at exploiting our ideas and turning them into sound business propositions. For example, LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays) were born here in 1972 but Japan leads the world in a market now estimated at £1 billion per year. Our other inventions include antibiotics, the commercial jetliner, integrated circuits and brain scanning technology. All were born here but raised elsewhere. It is estimated that we lose about £165 billion per year from our GNP because we have not taken advantage of our inventions. Source: Barbara Roche MP, now small business minister, Daily Telegraph, 15 July 1996 Page 1 of 4