Inventing our future Collective action for a sustainable economy

What do we
need to change?
Innovation
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generate innovation and product viability. The third sector can also be
a source of social innovation, improving and complementing mainstream
public service provision.
Leading innovative companies and organisations share a number of
attributes. These include recruiting innovative employees, providing training
in creativity and innovation, developing a learning culture, empowering
employees to take forward new ideas and rewarding successful innovation.
Priority 2:
Commercialising R&D and adopting innovation
Despite the region’s strengths in R&D, evidence suggests a problem in
translating new products and services into profit or scaling up innovative
companies beyond niche markets. In part, this can be explained by the
fact that innovation often takes time to have a major impact on
economic growth. However, it also reflects the fact that the region and key
cities are often ‘knowledge-generating’ locations as opposed to
‘knowledge-using’ locations. Business profitability and wider economic
growth are often driven more by adoption of existing ideas, products or
processes in the workplace and implementing them to improve quality
and efficiency, or to develop new goods and services. Innovative
companies are often prevented from becoming keystone companies of
local economies through financial drives for early exit or acquisition,
limited management, creative and technical skills pools.
Universities are a critical part of the regional innovation system. Close
collaboration between universities, research institutes, businesses and
the government is a feature of successful regions. This goes beyond
knowledge transfer, spin-outs and licensing, to a wider range of interactions
with businesses and society. Universities provide access to new ideas;
skilled labour and internships; levering research funds and grants;
consultancy services; public space and levering intellectual resources from
a wider range of disciplines than a single business could do on its own.
Success in commercialising and adopting innovation can be increased
through effective business support, access to a range of finance products,
effective business and social networking and exposure to national and
international markets. Collective public sector procument can also create
demand for emerging technologies and services.
Priority 3:
Strengthening clusters around leading private sector R&D companies
and research-intensive universities
The East of England contains the major facilities of a number of global
top 50 R&D companies, the internationally renowned University of
Cambridge and the associated technology cluster in the Cambridge
sub-region, with in excess of 1,400 companies and employing 43,000
people. The region has major ‘knowledge-generating’ clusters in health
and life sciences, ICT, and emerging strengths in high-growth areas such
as environmental technologies and renewable energy.
During the lifetime of this strategy, there needs to be a focus on the sectors
and clusters in which the region has existing or potential international
advantage. To retain, attract and nurture companies at the forefront of
innovation and R&D, the region needs to develop networks and a leading
innovation infrastructure. This includes ‘third-generation’ science parks
and business infrastructure linked to major R&D companies, institutes and
research-intensive universities. Beyond high-quality commercial, research