Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol1-1 > Uk

Its overall level of innovation performance places it among the“innovation leaders” group with the other EU countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany. Its main strength in recent years has been an excellent performance in areas of lifelong learning and early stage venture capital provision. The proportion of innovation active businesses has risen from 49% in 2001 to 68% in 2007, according to the government’s first “Annual Innovation Report” in 2008. This report also confirms that business expenditure on R&D is fifth in the G7, and the UK has the second-largest equity market in world, but only 4% of venture capital investment was in start-up and early stage companies.

Innovation performance is a topic of national level debate, especially with the launch of the government’s White Paper “Innovation Nation” (2008). This White Paper builds on some recommendations from the Sainsbury Review of Science and Innovation (2007), which emphasised that the best way for the UK to compete, in an era of globalisation, is to move into high-value goods, services and industries. In addition, government consultation with over 600 businesses led to the publication of “Enterprise: unlocking the UK’s talent” (2008), which sets out a number of important challenges for building an enterprise economy.

Main innovation challenges

• Boost relatively weak intensity of innovation activity in enterprises.
• Translating knowledge into ‘new to market products’ and intellectual capital.
• Improving future skills needs.

Action

Extensive stakeholder consultation was undertaken in the development of the government’s Innovation White Paper (2008). This consisted of a series of workshops with representation from business, research, think tanks, education and public services as well as written responses from a diverse range of organisations. There was reported to be a high degree of consensus among stakeholders around a number of themes that can be seen to represent future actions and opportunities for innovation policy in the UK. These themes included: procurement; university assessment; innovation vouchers; SET and language skills; risk/innovation culture; public understanding and acceptance of science and technology.

Some actions and opportunities for future innovation policy include an increase in the rates of tax credit relief for large companies and SMEs announced in 2008, which should help to further boost R&D activity in firms. With respect to responding to the challenge of translating knowledge into intellectual capital, the UK-IPO is examining whether Government can play some role in helping small firms obtain investment through better reporting of their intangible assets. The UK government has specifically identified the issue of skills and training as a challenge within the SME sector and has introduced measures to address this as part of a wider policy mix, which included “Learndirect” and the Science & Engineering Ambassadors Scheme.

For more information on individual member states’ Inno Policy Trendcharts, visit:
www.proinno-europe.eu