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The Innovation Economy after Covid-19
Innovation will be at the forefront of the UK’s strategy for competitiveness through the 2020s. Innovation happens in places. This paper is about the pathfinding journeys that places pursue in order to host and deliver the kind of innovation that can underpin national productivity and local well-being
For centuries innovation places have been central to the UK’s economic story and success.
Place continues to matter hugely to innovation and we see this in countless ways in our cities and regions. Places allow research to spill over into enterprise in neighbouring buildings. They encourage a large company’s innovative suppliers to learn from each other and develop new solutions together. They provide the kind of space layouts and affordability for startups to find their feet. They give institutions the chance to be close by for mutual advantage. They provide access for more people to take part in innovation and believe in its benefits. They give companies in weaker performing regions more ways to absorb and apply new ideas. Successful places deliver on many core national and local goals.
Yet in the UK these bonds between place and innovation have - by leading international standards - still yet to be fully articulated and embraced across levels of government, business and institutions. The roles of market activity and public policy in prospective innovation places sometimes remain crudely understood. There are unmet knowledge gaps about what kinds of physical environments, governance models, and community-building really do foster sustained innovation in different places, for different sectors, in different business cycles, at different points in their journey. In the pursuit of new and reinvented hubs of innovation, what often prevails is innovation by edict, zero sum thinking, ad hoc opportunism, and the dilution of valiant efforts.
The UK is now home to a smorgasbord of more than 100 established and aspiring hubs of innovation. Some of the world’s finest research and technology has clustered in a relatively small number of locations, often without strong place-intentional efforts to amplify the collaboration benefits. Meanwhile several vanguard places have begun their journey towards becoming (once again) a genuine hub of innovation and optimising innovation’s economic and social returns. Many others are aware of the potential but have not yet been supported to truly assess the value or viability of embedding innovation in place.
The UK is now attempting an ambitious feat - to expand and redistribute its innovation economy rapidly across a large number of hub locations, sectors and institutions. This ambition – in a post-pandemic context which demands an inclusive recovery – relies on more consciously joined up and sequenced approaches. There is a widely perceived need to share learning and scale insight among more places – be they city centres seeing a chance for the innovation economy to fill the vacuum left by the consumption economy, science parks diversifying into vibrant connected communities, or districts looking to square the circle between innovation and inclusion.
Navigating a path to more innovation places becoming the best they can be, becomes an even more urgent task deserving of national dialogue, priority and peer-to-peer learning. Otherwise the risk is that the laudable quest for more hubs of innovation is undertaken without the full capacity, knowledge or guiding compass to succeed.
This paper has been co-created in the form of a handbook in order to crystallise some of this common knowledge, and so provide guidance to places at many different stages of maturity and development. It is inspired by the experiences that dozens of places in the UK and around the world have found salient at key points in their 21st century story so far.
This handbook can be a timely and ongoing resource to many places in the UK: those that have been doing the groundwork and are now ready to really accelerate on their path to becoming internationally recognised hubs of innovation, and those that are reaching key decision stages about what kind of innovation location they have the potential to become.
The stages and ingredients identified in this paper are designed to inform and equip all those who have an interest in supporting a specific place to succeed. This includes the network of public and business leaders upon whom all innovation places rely. It provides tools to assess progress, diagnose problems, confront choices, and access more insight.
We hope it complements the wider knowledge exchange, capacity-building and profile-raising that innovation places will seek in the months and years ahead, including via the expansion of the UK Innovation Districts Group that the Connected Places Catapult is supporting.
Of course the stages identified in this paper will never be a perfect fit with the story and trajectory of any given place. There is no one single path. Equally not all ingredients for innovation in a place can be (nor should be) scripted in advance. Instead, by assembling the insights of those reporting back many years after they began negotiating their own path, it offers a user-friendly resource for those seeking to consider what they may have missed or need to anticipate in the times ahead.
We hope this handbook is used by leaders, decision-makers and place champions to:
The Innovation Economy after Covid-19
Innovation will be at the forefront of the UK’s strategy for competitiveness through the 2020s. Innovation happens in places. This paper is about the pathfinding journeys that places pursue in order to host and deliver the kind of innovation that can underpin national productivity and local well-being
For centuries innovation places have been central to the UK’s economic story and success.
Place continues to matter hugely to innovation and we see this in countless ways in our cities and regions. Places allow research to spill over into enterprise in neighbouring buildings. They encourage a large company’s innovative suppliers to learn from each other and develop new solutions together. They provide the kind of space layouts and affordability for startups to find their feet. They give institutions the chance to be close by for mutual advantage. They provide access for more people to take part in innovation and believe in its benefits. They give companies in weaker performing regions more ways to absorb and apply new ideas. Successful places deliver on many core national and local goals.
Yet in the UK these bonds between place and innovation have - by leading international standards - still yet to be fully articulated and embraced across levels of government, business and institutions. The roles of market activity and public policy in prospective innovation places sometimes remain crudely understood. There are unmet knowledge gaps about what kinds of physical environments, governance models, and community-building really do foster sustained innovation in different places, for different sectors, in different business cycles, at different points in their journey. In the pursuit of new and reinvented hubs of innovation, what often prevails is innovation by edict, zero sum thinking, ad hoc opportunism, and the dilution of valiant efforts.
The UK is now home to a smorgasbord of more than 100 established and aspiring hubs of innovation. Some of the world’s finest research and technology has clustered in a relatively small number of locations, often without strong place-intentional efforts to amplify the collaboration benefits. Meanwhile several vanguard places have begun their journey towards becoming (once again) a genuine hub of innovation and optimising innovation’s economic and social returns. Many others are aware of the potential but have not yet been supported to truly assess the value or viability of embedding innovation in place.
The UK is now attempting an ambitious feat - to expand and redistribute its innovation economy rapidly across a large number of hub locations, sectors and institutions. This ambition – in a post-pandemic context which demands an inclusive recovery – relies on more consciously joined up and sequenced approaches. There is a widely perceived need to share learning and scale insight among more places – be they city centres seeing a chance for the innovation economy to fill the vacuum left by the consumption economy, science parks diversifying into vibrant connected communities, or districts looking to square the circle between innovation and inclusion.
Navigating a path to more innovation places becoming the best they can be, becomes an even more urgent task deserving of national dialogue, priority and peer-to-peer learning. Otherwise the risk is that the laudable quest for more hubs of innovation is undertaken without the full capacity, knowledge or guiding compass to succeed.
This paper has been co-created in the form of a handbook in order to crystallise some of this common knowledge, and so provide guidance to places at many different stages of maturity and development. It is inspired by the experiences that dozens of places in the UK and around the world have found salient at key points in their 21st century story so far.
This handbook can be a timely and ongoing resource to many places in the UK: those that have been doing the groundwork and are now ready to really accelerate on their path to becoming internationally recognised hubs of innovation, and those that are reaching key decision stages about what kind of innovation location they have the potential to become.
The stages and ingredients identified in this paper are designed to inform and equip all those who have an interest in supporting a specific place to succeed. This includes the network of public and business leaders upon whom all innovation places rely. It provides tools to assess progress, diagnose problems, confront choices, and access more insight.
We hope it complements the wider knowledge exchange, capacity-building and profile-raising that innovation places will seek in the months and years ahead, including via the expansion of the UK Innovation Districts Group that the Connected Places Catapult is supporting.
Of course the stages identified in this paper will never be a perfect fit with the story and trajectory of any given place. There is no one single path. Equally not all ingredients for innovation in a place can be (nor should be) scripted in advance. Instead, by assembling the insights of those reporting back many years after they began negotiating their own path, it offers a user-friendly resource for those seeking to consider what they may have missed or need to anticipate in the times ahead.
We hope this handbook is used by leaders, decision-makers and place champions to:
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