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May 15, 2008
UK Innovation Nation
Once again, I think the British are showing how much they get it in the new I-Cubed Economy. In March, the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills published its new innovation strategy report: Innovation Nation.
The report starts out with a very clear statement: the nature of innovation has changed:
In the past, innovation was thought of as a simple process of investment in fundamental research leading to commercialisation by farsighted management in industry. This process has traditionally been supported by supply-side policy initiatives.
However, innovation draws on a wide variety of sources and is driven as much by demand as by supply. The insights generated by basic science are critical to long-term innovation performance but the path they follow from the laboratory to the marketplace is long, complex and uncertain.
Other sources of innovation include the creative application of tried-and-tested technologies and the role of design in developing innovative products and services. Innovation is also not restricted to the private sector – increasingly the public sector is called upon (often in partnership with the private and third sectors) to innovate in the design and delivery of public services.
Enabled and accelerated by new technologies, innovation is becoming more open. Organisations are increasingly reaching outside their walls to find ideas – to universities, other companies, suppliers and even competitors. Users are also increasingly innovating independently or in collaboration with businesses or in the co-creation of public services. Government policy needs to recognise these new sources of innovation and, in particular, develop new instruments that drive demand for innovation as well as its supply.
They refer to this as a demand-driven innovation policy. This is something that US policy has not yet come to grips with – although writing of folks like Chris Hill (Post-Scientific Society) are pushing in that direction.
The report then goes on layout action items in a number of areas. I will try to summarize what I thing are some of the key areas:
• Use government procurement and regulation to create demand to innovation – in both the public and private sectors.
• Direct support to business innovation efforts, such as vouchers for companies to work with universities and national labs and creation of technology demonstration platforms. But this also includes “examining whether there is a role for Government in helping small firms obtain investment through better reporting of their intangible assets” and training UK export and business support specialists in IP management.
• Increased government investment in S&T, but also “broaden knowledge exchange between the research base and businesses into the arts and humanities and service sectors such as the creative industries.”
• Creating an international strategy to make the UK an attractive innovation-based location.
• Stepped up efforts to increase workforce skills, including establishing “at least one National Skills Academy (NSA) in every major sector of the economy. … Government is working with Peter Jones to develop plans for a National Enterprise Academy and with James Dyson to launch the Dyson School for Design Innovation.”
• A program of public sector innovation
• Building a regional innovation strategy that acknowledges that every region can be innovative in its own ways:
In the UK, innovation performance varies considerably from place to place. It reflects sectoral specialisation and history. Traditionally, the UK’s innovation policy has been concentrated on high-tech manufacturing and this will remain vitally important. However, in the future, spatial innovation strategies must build on each region’s distinctiveness. Moreover, because of the internationalisation of knowledge production, many UK regions will increasingly depend not on the creation of knowledge but on its absorption from elsewhere.
In other words, they are developing a systemic approach to innovation. Shouldn’t the US do the same?
Posted by Ken Jarboe at May 15, 2008 10:19 AM
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