The past few weeks have seen the end of the opportunity to contribute to the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee's inquiry into Innovation, Growth and the Regions alongside many valuable contributions in the oral evidence session. We can now expect the committee to publish the written evidence in the coming weeks, but the RDS is keen to kick off the debate sooner rather than later.
The publication of the Invest 2035 Green Paper last year has provided a much needed boost for the debate about the future of UK Industrial Strategy. The RDS welcomes much of the initial messaging, but the detail is yet to come as we wait for the coming White Paper. Meanwhile, the Committee’s new inquiry into Innovation, Growth and the Regions provides a further opportunity to assess where the conversation is developing encouragingly, and what pitfalls may lie over the horizon.
This section will be the first of 3, tackling the key questions put forward in the call for evidence. Beginning by responding to the question: how does the government drive research and support innovation in our regions?
A major factor that will be driving the UK’s industrial policy going forward will be the new Industrial Strategy Council. Since its announcement the full list of members has been released, and despite a clear a clear effort to incorporate many of the groups we discussed in our initial response, there is still one group that is unrepresented. UK SMEs comprise nearly 99.9% of the business community within the UK, yet there is painfully little representation of entrepreneurship and early-stage enterprise on the council. Aislinn Rice is a welcome addition but appears to be alone in covering this aspect of the UK ecosystem. If the government truly wishes to represent the UK economy, it must incorporate additional voices to fill this gap. Regional S&T clusters such as Innovate Cambridge and Manchester’s Knowledge Quarter (overseen by Bruntwood SciTech’s facilities) may provide the natural leaders we are looking for.
Of course, simply placing the right voices on the council will not deliver the change in focus required to best engage with UK SMEs. As the RDS has advocated before, disbanding ARIA and separating Innovate UK from UKRI with the intention of focusing it on Chasm II (Commercialisation Translation) could reduce wasted expenditure and better fill the gaps that currently exist within the UK innovation ecosystem. From its inception, ARIA described its primary concern as ‘how research is funded, rather than the precise area, industry, or technology’, displaying both a lack of focus in its output and a narrow understanding of how innovations are commercialised. The committee itself has recognised this in its 2021 report. The true gap lies at Chasm II and will require a fully integrated response. UKRI has already demonstrated its ability to tackle innovation from a broader perspective, covering multiple vectors and a much larger portion of the commercialisation journey. Innovate UK has the potential to be refocused on providing support around CRLs 5 - 8 where it is truly needed.
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UK Interventions Mapped over CRL & Vectors
Greater support is required across all 12 vectors (the commercial drivers highlighted in the Triple Chasm Model), although amongst the levers accessible to the national government, Vector E2 (Proposition Framing, Competition & Regulation) is the simplest to directly improve through policy. The committee has clearly recognised this in requesting input on UK regulation & intellectual property policy. Our regulation policy could benefit significantly from an improved understanding of the differences between markets, products and technology. New emerging markets in software, lifesciences and agrifoods are all developing around the interaction between pervasive and focused technologies. Failing to understand the differences between these categories, risks erecting unnecessary barriers and potential loopholes. The EU AI Act may provide a useful example in how to engage with each of these components with clarity. In distinguishing between technologies (General-Purpose AI Models), products (Measures in Support for Innovation) and markets (Post-Market Monitoring), the act ensures its policies are focused appropriately.
With regards to Intellectual Property, the UK can take some pride in its adherence to the principles of fair play and healthy competition through the development of a strong, well-established rulebook for the protection of IP, over many years. While refining the technology taxonomy further would benefit these systems, the main challenges lie in enforcement rather than design. In the current geopolitical climate of increasing protectionism and strained policing budgets, enforcing our existing regulations effectively is critical.