The Centre will receive £2.8 million over the next five years to carry out the highest quality research into how innovation can make businesses more competitive, improve public services delivery and help the UK meet the social, environmental and economic challenges it faces.
The Centre is being set up in response to The Government’s ‘Innovation Nation’ White Paper (March 2008) and jointly funded by four partners: the Economic and Social Research Council; the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills; the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts; and the Technology Strategy Board.
Professor Alan Hughes, director of the UK Innovation Research Centre and director of the Centre for Business Research, explains the context for the initiative: “Innovation is much more broadly defined than it used to be. It’s not just about successfully introducing new products; innovation in services, processes, even in business models and ways of working is increasingly important. We need new research so that both practitioners and policymakers can understand the key issues in all these forms of innovation - particularly when current global economic conditions make it more important than ever to ensure that the UK’s innovative capacity is enhanced.”
The Centre builds on the proven track record of expertise in the two partner organisations. In addition to their research, members of both institutions are involved in developing business practice and policy advice in the fields of innovation and knowledge exchange at national and international levels - for example, contributing to the UK Innovation and Productivity Grand Challenge and the recent Australian National Innovation Review. The Centre brings together a critical mass of leading scholars in the field.
The Centre will ensure that new research on innovation in both the public and private sectors has the greatest effect on policy and practice. Dr Ammon Salter, director of research at the UK IRC and reader in innovation management at Imperial College Business School, outlines the research agenda, which is due to begin in January:
“The UK Innovation Research Centre will explore the relationship between innovation and business performance and how this affects the national economy and the individual organisation. This will feed directly into both innovation policy and practice, for example in helping to open companies up to new forms of collaboration and policy makers to develop new instruments and strategies to promote innovation and knowledge exchange. ”
In addition to building research capabilities, the UK Innovation Research Centre will also actively disseminate its work through a ‘Knowledge Exchange Hub’. Michael Kitson, Hub Director and university senior lecturer in international macroeconomics at Judge Business School, says: “We want to ensure that our research agenda can effectively respond to the needs of the business and policy communities, and we will develop knowledge exchange activities ranging from seminars to Innovation Podcasts to ensure our research has a significant impact on both policy and practice.”
Background
The Centre is being set up in response to The Government’s ‘Innovation Nation’ White Paper (March 2008). This laid out the Government’s intention to “build on the UK’s current impressive performance on research and broaden the traditional knowledge exchange agenda to encompass new disciplines, new sectors, new businesses and those who work in the development and delivery of public services.”
The paper can be found at: http://www.dius.gov.uk/publications/ScienceInnovation.pdf
About The Centre for Business Research at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
The CBR, co-located within Judge Business School, is an independent research institution within the University of Cambridge. Its research spans the University departments of Geography, Economics, Land Economy, Social and Political Sciences, Physics and Engineering. The CBR has been recognised by independent peer review both as an international centre of excellence in innovation and enterprise research, and for the practical impact of its research on policy and practice. It has raised over £20 million of funding to support its research activities. The co-location of the CBR within Judge Business School situates it in the most vibrant entrepreneurial community in Europe containing both locally-born high-tech businesses and the subsidiaries of leading multinationals. www.cbr.cam.ac.uk Judge Business School itself is internationally recognised as one of the leading providers of innovative, intellectually challenging and practical business management education across a portfolio of undergraduate, graduate and executive programmes. As a fully integrated department of a world renowned university, Judge Business School hosts one of the largest concentrations of interdisciplinary business and management research activity in Europe. http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk
About Imperial College Business School
Imperial College Business School is a world-class provider of business education and research, focusing primarily on Imperial College’s well-established strengths. The School possesses recognised, international expertise in three specialist areas: finance; innovation and entrepreneurship and healthcare management. It has the largest single group of academics working on innovation in Europe.
It is the only European School to have appeared in the Financial Times’ “Best in Entrepreneurship’ table, every year since the assessment began. The School's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group is one of the leading research groups of its kind in Europe, having received over £25m in funding from governmental and corporate sponsors. www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school
More informaton: www.cbr.cam.ac.uk
The Centre for Business Research at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge and Imperial College Business School are setting up a new collaborative venture – the UK Innovation Research Centre (UK IRC).