Future Ready: the Path to Growth
Creating an inclusive Industrial Strategy for the whole UK
Research-intensive universities play a core role in the regional landscape, acting as conveners in every region and nation of the UK and supporting the partnerships needed across academia, industry, philanthropy and government. The ability of universities to bring together expertise from across disciplines is critical to driving these partnerships, with social science as important to technology uptake as engineers.
The Industrial Strategy should seek to maximise the wider spillover effects of university innovation for places across the UK, realising not just wealth creation, but high-value jobs, infrastructure investment and regional regeneration opportunities.
"If you want to ‘unleash the full potential’ of cities and regions to create strategic, high-potential clusters, higher education will have a fundamental role to play."
Arnab Basu CEO and co-founder, Kromek Group
Supporting universities to drive innovation-led growth across the UK
Across the UK, research-intensive universities have developed long-standing relationships within their local political ecosystems. Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) in England and city deals and growth deals in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have created a strong framework for universities to collaborate with their local government and industry partners.
There is an emerging risk that places without the new mayoral strategic authority status could be disadvantaged due to a lack of formal collaboration mechanisms and additional funding opportunities.
Government proposals for local growth plans can help address this issue. Members of our Expert Panel have been clear that making innovation and skills central to regional development policy will be crucial to supporting high-potential clusters around the UK. As part of the plans, government should also consider opportunities to provide infrastructure funding for specialist facilities and scale-up space for hire. This would act to de-risk commercial investment in new facilities across the regions.
Enabling collaboration across regions and nations
Coordinating funding opportunities and innovation facilities between regional and national levels will be crucial to maximising their impact. This would support join up between regions with specialisms in similar sectors to ensure parts of the UK do not compete but collaborate to create UK competitive advantage.
In addition, and ahead of Phase 2 of the Spending Review, assessment of centrally run place-based R&I funding schemes and initiatives should be joined up with development of the Industrial Strategy. These are funding streams and programmes (such as investment zones) that run through a range of government departments and bodies, including MHCLG, DSIT, HMT, UKRI, Innovate UK and DBT, which fund universities and other partners to innovate and support local and regional growth.
This will help ensure delivery of clear place-based impacts, strengthening R&D performance, maximising existing regional strength and combining excellent research with translational capabilities where there are clear paths to growth.
Solutions
What can research-intensive universities offer?
- Work proactively with their local governments and acting as conveners where needed.
- Share best practice between regions and between the UK nations around how to foster a collaborative relationship between local authorities and academia, and drive regeneration and prosperity across the whole of the UK.
- Consider opportunities to convene and lead collaborative place-based innovative projects in line with government priorities.
What can the government do?
- Ensure local growth plans have a clear relationship to the national Industrial Strategy and universities have an opportunity to contribute as key partners for this work.
- Support capacity building for local government to deliver funding and support for innovation-led growth.
- Ensure place-based R&I funding and initiatives are connected to the Industrial Strategy to create a consistent funding framework. Any funding
streams should strengthen the long-term international competitiveness of a region’s R&I performance, invest in areas of genuine regional R&I strength, support collaboration between partners, regions and nations, and ensure coherence with other funding programmes.