Aerospace executives believe the industry in Britain has four strengths that need further multimillion-pound investment to remain world class: wings, engines, electronic systems, and airframe components.
How to design an innovation culture, innovation portfolios, and the corresponding organizational structures, while remaining world class at managing the existing business.
Despite the decades-long attrition of higher education in the UK, the extraordinary thing is that our universities are still very good and a number of them remain world class.
David Willetts, the universities minister, said it was fantastic news for UK universities, academics and students, but warned the sector not to get complacent as universities still needed to work hard to remain world class.
Giving the clearest indication yet that high fees will be the norm at the most competitive institutions, Michael Arthur, who is vice-chancellor of Leeds University, told the Guardian that the most selective universities needed to raise their fees past the standstill figure of £7,000-8,000 a year to remain world class.
We've reached a point where we do need to make investments if we want to remain world class".
The remainder of the government's £5.9bn investment in research infrastructure will be spent on existing facilities, "to ensure they remain world class".
Yet, the ingredients that had propelled Boston's strength in technology remained: world-class research universities, a highly educated population, and a high concentration of venture capital.
Tesco is the UK's largest retailer, one of its few remaining world-class businesses and the shop that over the past two decades has been the single biggest shaper of our high streets.
At one point, the sparring philosophers direct their attention to the future of the French economy: given its terminal decline as an industrial power, what are the nation's remaining world-class attributes?
Despite a humbling defeat to Real Madrid in this year's UEFA Champions League semifinals, which has many questioning whether the team can remain world-class, FC Bayern is here to stay.
