Babbage Forum 2025: An international meeting of leading industrial innovation policymakers

On the 16th of September 2025, the Babbage Forum brought together senior invited policymakers and academics from sixteen countries to jointly explore the current challenges, trends and opportunities for industrial innovation policymaking in the context of a tumultuous global landscape.

Former Minister for Universities and Science, Lord David Willetts opened proceedings with an overview of the geopolitical context policymakers currently face followed by Keynote presentations by leading figures from Europe, USA, China and Asia. Informed by meetings that the Babbage Forum held in Boston, Hangzhou, Singapore and Berlin, each presenter introduced the contexts in their respective regions to provide brief overviews of the international scene as it affects industrial policy.

Attended by influential individuals from major economies – creators of national industrial strategies, former ministers, and high-ranking civil servants with extensive involvement in industrial policy, delegates then engaged in small-group round table discussion sessions targeting in more depth this year’s main themes:

• Geopolitics, Security and Sovereignty
• Supply chains and global markets
• Industrial and technological capabilities

Convening practitioners and providing a platform for cross-border knowledge exchange to improve policymaking, mutual learning, and industrial innovation policy lies at the core approach of the Babbage Forum, as highlighted by Professor Mike Gregory, the founder and Chair of the Babbage Forum:

“Our community seeks to operate below the political level but above the technocratic level and the primary aim of these occasions is to provide opportunities for professional policymakers to share experiences and expertise related to current and future challenges. We hope that these deliberations continue to help inform policymakers around the world as they wrestle with new and ever more complex challenges.”

A summary report of the deliberations is available to download, and each of the keynote presentations can be viewed below.

Keynotes

• Geopolitics: Lord David Willetts
• ASEAN: Dr Marco Kamiya
• China: Professor Xiaobo Wu
• Europe: Dr Erik Canton
• U.S: Professor Elisabeth Reynolds

Previous meetings

2024 Industrial Innovation Policymaking in a changing global environment

2023 International Industrial Innovation Policymaker Meeting