Wales stands at a crossroads. On one side, we have immense industrial and technological potential across sectors like automotive, renewables, compound semiconductors, digital and AI. On the other hand, we risk watching transformational opportunities, like floating offshore wind, quite literally drift away to Europe while we look on from the shoreline.
That cannot be our future.
After a decade building Business News Wales, I’ve naturally developed a helicopter view of all our industries. I’ve watched how clusters rise, how new technologies emerge, and how businesses adapt under pressure. And here’s what’s clear, our innovation model needs to be redrawn, not just tweaked. The traditional, siloed approach to economic development is no longer fit for purpose.
If we want Wales to compete globally, we need convergence, where our sectors feed each other, where expertise transfers across industries, and where government policy is connected to the businesses it hopes to support.
Take the example of floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea. With billions in estimated economic value and thousands of jobs on the line, this could be a generational opportunity. But serious concerns remain that too much of the infrastructure, including turbines, floaters, anchoring systems, and substation components, may be shipped in from European supply chains instead of being built here in Wales.
Why?
Look at our world-class automotive supply chain. Across Wales, we have precision engineering firms, component manufacturers, and systems integrators who supply into some of the most complex global value chains. These businesses know how to work to rigorous standards, innovate under constraint, and deliver at scale. So why aren’t they being brought into conversations about building the supply chain for renewables?
We must begin to think differently about our innovation ecosystem.
The automotive sector, which already faces headwinds from the transition to electric vehicles, could find a new growth curve by diversifying into renewable energy components. The same applies in reverse, renewable energy companies need the agility, know-how and systems thinking that comes from decades of automotive innovation.
Similarly, the expertise embedded in Wales’ compound semiconductor cluster, one of the strongest in Europe shouldn’t just be viewed through a tech lens. Its applications in energy management, grid stability, and AI-enhanced manufacturing can and should serve our national renewables strategy.
Furthermore, our AI entrepreneurs, some of whom are only just emerging, are building world-class platforms in finance, healthcare and logistics and should be incentivised to apply their tools to Wales’ industrial base, helping optimise everything from predictive maintenance to smarter procurement.
None of this requires invention from scratch. It requires better orchestration of what already exists. And this is where the government must step up, not just as a funder or regulator, but as an active convener.
It is not civil servants who will discover Wales’ competitive advantage. That insight lives within our entrepreneurs.
Many are a little ragged around the edges and may not have the polished comms teams or parliamentary presence of hard-working career politicians, but they do have hard-won knowledge, resilience, and the creative capacity to solve real-world problems.
What they need is a system that captures that insight and feeds it into economic policy. A system that helps sectors collide in productive ways. And a government that recognises Wales' greatest economic asset is the SME supply chain of innovators already here, too often overlooked, but still standing, still inventing, still adapting.
We now need a shift from siloed innovation to system-wide collaboration. This starts with creating cross-sector forums where manufacturing, energy, technology, and automotive businesses can come together to co-design practical, scalable solutions.
Diversification should be incentivised, not just in research and development, but in the commercial deployment of technologies across different industry verticals.
Public procurement must be used as a strategic lever to ensure that Welsh-built components are prioritised in Welsh infrastructure projects, helping to anchor supply chains locally. And crucially, entrepreneurs must be supported by responsive funding mechanisms that reflect the pace and pressures of the real world.
Wales is capable of far more than it currently delivers. But we will only reach that potential if we break down the walls between our strengths and build new bridges between our industries.
The next phase of economic development in Wales must be rooted in cross-sector alignment and smart public intervention. If we get that right, confidence within our Welsh dragons may just be reignited.
