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 FINNOV Final Conference
Financing Innovation and Growth: Reforming a Dysfunctional System
 Date: 1 and 2 February 2012
Venue: House of Commons (Day 1) and Italian Cultural Institute (Day 2), London
The final conference of the FP7 FINNOV project (Finance, Innovation & Growth, www.finnov-fp7.eu), focused on the need for finance to be reformed so that it serves innovation and value creation - rather than innovation serving finance and too much value destruction. Our motto is: finance for creative destruction not destructive creation. Further details here.
 UK~IRC Innovation Summit 2011 -
Growing Through Innovation
 Date: 25th November 2011
Venue: IBM Hursley, Winchester
The Innovation Summit, UK~IRC's annual one day conference for practitioners, policy-makers and academics, took place on 25th November at IBM Hursley. It was a chance to debate 'hot-topics' in innovation and share best practice. This year's event, entitled Growing Through Innovation, united the latest academic research with real-world business concerns, to provide evidence-driven discussions on using innovation to sustain growth. More here.
PRESS RELEASE
18 July 2011
THE BRITISH ECONOMY:
AS GOOD AS IT GETS?
Has Britain's productivity been permanently and drastically impaired by the banking crisis? And does this mean that the economy has already returned to near normal levels of capacity utilisation? Many policy makers say yes. A new research report challenges the evidence and cautions against excessive policy tightening that may risk a vicious spiral of weaker demand and weaker supply.
The report "Is the British Economy supply constrained? A critique of productivity pessimism" by Bill Martin, Centre for Business Research, follows on from his April 2010 study and takes a detailed look at the reasons why Britain's labour productivity has fallen short. He finds policy makers' structural explanations unconvincing. Bill Martin argues that productivity weakness licensed by workers' willingness to work for low real wages is symptomatic of an economy suffering deficient demand and excess indebtedness, and is not the result of a sudden loss of entrepreneurial flair.
Commenting on the research Professor Alan Hughes, Director of the Centre for Business Research at Cambridge and of the UK~IRC, says "Understanding the sources of innovation and enterprise is central to the research programme of the UK~IRC. It is essential that fiscal and monetary policy decisions which bear directly on innovation and enterprise are based on well informed judgement about the structural state of the British economy, a key issue raised in Bill Martin's timely and thought-provoking report."
NOTES TO EDITORS
About the Author
 Bill Martin is a Senior Research Associate of the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he was a member of the Government Economic Service working on macroeconomic policy until 1981, a Specialist Adviser in the UK Cabinet Office Central Policy Review Staff (1981 - 1983) and a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee (1986 - 1997). Between 1983 and 2004, he held senior roles, including that of chief economist, at the investment banking and fund management arms of the Swiss bank UBS. He became a member of the Financial Services Consumer Panel in 2009.
e-mail: bm342@cam.ac.uk
About the CBR
The Centre for Business Research (CBR) is an independent research institution hosted at Cambridge University's Judge Business School. It began originally as the Small Business Research Centre, and to this day, the study of smaller enterprises remains a key area of research. The CBR is a multi-disciplinary centre, drawing on expertise across all the University departments, as well as increasingly working in international collaborations.
www.cbr.cam.ac.uk
About the UK~IRC
The UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~ IRC) is a collaborative initiative for cutting-edge research and knowledge hub activity in innovation, established in response to The Government's 'Innovation Nation' White Paper (March 2008). It is a joint venture between the Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, and Imperial College London Business School.
www.ukirc.ac.uk
 Click here to download the Report (includes new postscript on revised US national accounts data)
For a printed copy of the report please contact:
Rachel Wagstaff on:
T: 01223 765320
E:
See also Bill Martin's earlier study Rebalancing the British economy: a strategic assessment
 
PRESS RELEASE
BUSINESS AND RESEARCH COMBINE TO BOOST UK ECONOMY
CIHE and UK~IRC announce launch of Research Taskforce
The Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) and the UK-Innovation Research Centre (UK~IRC) has launched a major Task Force to answer the question: how does the UK maximise the value of publicly-funded research? The CIHE and UK~IRC believe that by uniting leading figures in industry and academia they will deliver an answer.
The Task Force's ambition is to ensure that Government policies and business and university activities are aligned to get maximum economic impact for the UK globally and to keep the country at the forefront of research. "We've set ourselves an exam question: How do we deepen understanding of the value of the research base in the UK and then enhance it?" says David Eyton, Group Head of Research and Technology at BP and the Task Force's co-chair. "We will explore this issue through workshops, research reviews, online collaboration channels, and interviews with many of the UK's outstanding innovators. We will then present our recommendations to the Government in July 2012."
Lord (David) Sainsbury, a member of the Steering Group, highlighted the importance of research to the UK in saying,
"Innovation is the only way we will be able to compete in today's global economy, and we should make the maximum use of our world-class research base"
"The UK faces increasing competition from countries where investment in research is growing. We must ensure that we maximise the impact of research that takes place in the UK and that we understand how to facilitate effective partnerships between industry and higher education" says Professor Shirley Pearce, Vice Chancellor of Loughborough University and co-chair of the Task Force.
Professor Alan Hughes, Director of the UK~IRC, said "The public sector is responsible for about a third of UK R&D. The central challenge is how best to enhance excellence in university research, maximise the strategic use of departmental public sector R&D and maximise complementarity with the private sector research and development effort."
Dr David Docherty, CEO of the CIHE, concluded, "Industry and higher education must unite effectively to tackle the challenge coming from fast growing economies, and the Task Force will make a major contribution to this unity."
Notes to editors
CIHE
The Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) is a strategic leadership network of blue-chip companies working with Vice Chancellors and universities to develop the UK's knowledge-based economy.
The CIHE Task Force on Creative, Digital and Information Technology produced a widely-received and influential report, The Fuse. This resulted in the development of the Brighton Fuse, which brings together researchers, universities and SMEs with the aim of driving innovation and growth within the digital and creative industries around Brighton and Hove. Brighton Fuse is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and involves the Universities of Brighton and Sussex as well as Wired Sussex.
The CIHE Engineering and Manufacturing Task Force recently published Powering Up, which called on the Government to give greater incentives to universities and industry to work closer together. Phase two of this Task Force is in progress and focuses on the talent pipeline for 2030.
UK~IRC
The UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~ IRC) is a joint venture between the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College Business School to further research and knowledge exchange on innovation policy and practice. The UK~IRC is global in scope and involves a large-scale, multi-year research programme and a Knowledge Hub to engage with and inform policy-makers and practitioners about innovation research. The research programme explores open innovation, service innovation, online communities and innovation policy-making. A further stream of research focuses on the nature of university-industry links and role of higher education in innovation systems. Through the Hub, our aim is to maximise the effect of the research on policy and practice, so as to help the UK face its social, environmental and economic challenges.
The Centre is co-funded by Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB). This support is gratefully acknowledged.
- Ensure that new research on innovation in both the public and private sectors has the greatest effect on policy and practice.
- Explore the relationship between innovation and business performance and how this affects the national economy and the individual organisation.
- Actively disseminating its work through a Knowledge Exchange Hub, this will include activities ranging from seminars to innovation podcasts.
List of CIHE/UK~IRC Research Task Force Steering Group members:
- James Baker, Director, BAE Systems
- Prof. Genevieve Berger, Chief R&D Officer, Unilever
- Prof. Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice Chancellor, University of Cambridge
- Prof. David Delpy, CEO Champion for Impact, RCUK
- Prof. Peter Downes, Vice Chancellor, University of Dundee
- Prof. Malcolm Grant, President & Provost, UCL
- Iain Gray, CEO, TSB
- Dr. Hermann Hauser, Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners
- Prof. Julia King, Vice Chancellor, University of Aston
- Prof. Pat Loughrey, Rector, Goldsmiths
- Prof. Ric Parker, Director of Research & Technology, Rolls-Royce
- Lord (David) Sainsbury of Turville, Peer, House of Lords
- Phil Smith, Chief Executive, Cisco UK and Ireland
- Dr. David Sweeney, Director of Research, Innovation & Skills, HEFCE
- Mark Thompson, Director General, BBC
- Prof. Patrick Vallance, SVP Medicines Discovery & Development, GSK
- Sir Tim Wilson, Former Vice Chancellor, University of Hertfordshire
Media contacts:
Dr David Docherty, Chief Executive, CIHE, Email:
Professor Alan Hughes, Director, UK~IRC, Email:
Sally Devine, Task Force Coordinator, CIHE, Email:
Philippa Millerchip, UK~IRC, Email:
 Open Innovation Choices -
What is British Enterprise doing?
22 June 2011
Open Innovation (OI) has become a "way of living" for many businesses. Andy Cosh and Joanne Jin Zhang and the research team designed a survey to find out the facts behind the hype. Between June and November 2010 a survey was carried out among 12,000 UK firms with up to 999 employees, covering both manufacturing and business services sector. 1,202 firms completed the survey. A Report with the first set of results was launched on 22nd June 2011 at NESTA in London.
Download the Report. (For a hard copy of the report, contact ).
 Further details on the Project and the Launch of the Report
 Hidden Connections
New report researches the knowledge exchange between the arts and humanities and the private, public and third sectors
17 May 2011
Research commissioned by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and undertaken by the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge Business School has shown that academics from the arts and humanities interact widely across the private, public and third sectors. The report showcasing this research, "Hidden Connections" was launch on Tuesday 17 May 2011.
The report, the biggest study of its kind to focus on the arts and humanities is based on three unique datasets and reveals several key findings: the arts and humanities are highly connected within the UK economy; they have significant links to the private sector; the academic benefits of knowledge exchange; benefits to students and the issues surrounding knowledge exchange.
The report enhances the AHRC's understanding of the challenges and opportunities in knowledge exchange. It builds on and reinforces the work that the AHRC has undertaken in this important area and it will allow the AHRC to develop appropriate, evidence-based funding models and guidance.
 The report is written by Professor Alan Hughes, Director CBR, Michael Kitson, University Senior Lecturer in International Macroeconomics and Research Associate CBR, and Jocelyn Probert, Senior Research Fellow, CBR with Anna Bullock, Survey and Database Manager and Isobel Milner, Assistant Database Manager CBR
To download the Hidden Connections Report
To download the Making Connections Briefing
See also
Details about the CBR project
AHRC latest news
Judge Business School latest news
Does too much labour flexibility harm the economy?
23 March 2011
Lifting the burden of regulation on business is unlikely to make the UK more competitive, and further changes to employment law could have an adverse impact on our knowledge economy.
 In an interview on employment law reform published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website, Simon Deakin, Assistant Director at the Centre for Business Research and Law Professor at the University of Cambridge, discusses the effects of changes proposed by the UK government. "There's a growing degree of evidence that says that employment rights are good for innovation and the knowledge economy. The changes currently proposed probably won't make much difference in this regard. But if we go further and seriously start cutting back within the limits allowed by EU law, that would be highly negative for UK competitiveness in my view. What we really need is to have a high skill, knowledge-intensive economy, and that doesn't come from eroding away employment rights and encouraging firms to employ people on a casual or insecure basis. It only comes if there is some sort of social contract underpinning the relationship between labour and management".
To listen to the interview, click here. Le Monde published an article on it which prompted a large number of comments. You can access this article by clicking here.
The Arts and Humanities: Endangered Species?
 On 25 February 2011, a group of eminent researchers who work in arts and humanities disciplines in universities around the UK gathered in Cambridge for a conference called "The Arts and Humanities: Endangered Species?" In light of the present funding reforms to Higher Education, each was asked to give a seven minute talk about why the arts and humanities matter and what cultural and social benefits these subjects bring. Some stressed their contribution to self-knowledge and the ability and freedom to ask questions; others on the dangers of the current reforms and the threat they pose to British higher education as a whole. Professor Hughes's presentation can be viewed here. More about this event here.
The role of intermediate research organisations in the commercialisation of science
 The work of , and on Intermediate Research Organisations
carried out as part of the IKC Commercialisation Lab project was widely quoted in the Hauser
Review on the role of such bodies in relation to the commercialisation of science. The
recommendations of their work were incorporated directly into the report. The policy
recommendations in the Hauser Report led to the launch in 2011 of a new £200 million Technology and Innovation Centre programme in the UK.
 UK~IRC Research Paper Shortlisted for International Schumpeter Prize
February 2011
A paper by Cher Li, Andrea Mina, Bruce Tether and Karl Wennberg was shortlisted for the International Schumpeter Prize at the 7th European Meeting of Applied Evolutionary Economics Conference in Pisa. The Conference taking place from 14th - 16th February at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, looked at 'Evolutionary Perspectives on Technical Change and Industrial Dynamics. The conference was sponsored by DIME and the International Schumpeter Society who fund the prize.
To read more about click here.
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