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UK ?innovation gap? narrows

The UK is much more innovative than was previously thought, according to new research. The ‘Innovation Gap’ report, published by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) shows that current methods of measuring innovation fails to consider all the innovation that goes on across the UK.

The UK is often assumed to lag a long way behind economic competitors such as the US, Germany and Japan. However, NESTA believes this is based on incomplete information. Traditional comparisons look at the amount spent on research & development or the number of US patents awarded to UK companies each year, and on these comparisons the UK is underperforming. However, in the UK, financial services, retail, consultancy and the public sector make up 94% of the economy but do not generate high numbers of patents or operate traditional R&D departments. The research shows that although all these industries are innovative and regularly develop new products and services which directly benefit the economy or society, this has not been captured in previous studies.

The report highlights recent UK successes such as the launch of shared mortgages for friends, NHS direct and many internet retailers which use highly innovative techniques to target customers. When taken into consideration these factors see the UK catch up with its competitors by as much as 80%.

Jonathan Kestenbaum, NESTA Chief Executive, said: “It would be easy to congratulate ourselves for being more innovative than we think. But failing to consider all this innovation has serious implications. “Government innovation policy traditionally focuses only on science and technology which, while relevant, is a fraction of the UK economy. “We must galvanise both Government and business around a national mission for innovation.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .