Frontiers in Skills, Business and Health and the role that modern STPs might play.

The most common words screamed by children attending pantomimes in the theatre are, “Look behind you”, warning the players on the stage of threats they cannot see. In our fast changing world there is no „one size fits all‟ model for STPs and they need to be relevant, open, inclusive and above all well supported politically & publically to survive. Such status cannot be achieved by ignoring issues in society today by pretending that STPs have little to offer or that such things will only distract their focus. In this paper I want to explore a few issues (and our responses to them) that emerged from our planning scenarios to extract the full potential from our modern Science and Technology Park. These issues are (in no particular order): The risk of failing to have access to the human capital or creative skills required to realise our potential. Without an adequate flow of creative scientific talent or human capital our prospects look dim. This issue can be traced back to the link between national education levels (particularly in Science and Mathematics) and the performance of innovation systems & research capability in certain countries. It is hardly surprising that those countries that have high performing school systems have high performing innovation systems and in fact perform well on most indicators, Finland and South Korea are good examples.