To increase innovation-led growth, the UK needs increased policy focus on the demand-side. That is the conclusion of Richard Jones, PVC for Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield:
Nor has [the last two decades’] policy framework been without positive results. Its successes include some substantial inward investment into the UK, which has led to a relatively high proportion of UK R&D being foreign-funded. The university science base is strong, well connected with industry, and there has been growing spin-out activity. But this has not been enough. Business-sponsored R&D continues its relative decline and university spin-outs seem unable to reach the scale required to make an impact on the wider economy.
It is time to admit that supply-side innovation policy is not enough, and that we need somehow to generate the demand for technological innovation that our current political economy doesn’t provide.
Read the rest here, or, for the more visually minded, there are four keys graphs.
