UK researchers take up Grand Challenge
Innovation has always mattered in economic development. But simply increasing spending on creating knowledge may not be the answer – we need to look at the whole system through which such knowledge translates to value creation. In a context where close to $1trillion/year is spent globally on R&D and where even the largest firms are moving towards ‘open innovation’ models this old question can benefit from a freshlook.
This project explores the implications of the changing 21stcentury context of networked, global and increasingly open innovation – a world in which knowledge flows become as important as knowledge creation. It involves a network of 5 UK universities – Cambridge, Cranfield, Imperial College, Liverpool and Loughborough working with the ESRC/EPSRC’s Advanced Institute for Management Research (AIM).
The research covers 4 key questions:
- What is the (knowledge) context within whichinnovation occurs in the UK?
- How do new firms form on the basis of knowledgeand its deployment?
- How do established firms access and useknowledge to improve their current activities and generate new directions?
- What technical and organisationalinfrastructures enable these activities?
The challenge is to make UK plc more competitive by converting more knowledge into innovation.
