Book Description

The UK has the potential to be world leader in innovation. The strength of UK universities and the wider knowledge base is a national asset being the most productive in the G8. But the challenges are great. To succeed in the global innovation economy, the UK must strengthen its ability to accelerate the commercialization of emerging technologies, and to capture the value chains linked to these. We have already made clear our commitment by maintaining the annual £4.6 billion budget for science and research programmes, with £150 million each year support university-business interaction. The UK's universities are increasingly collaborating with each other and with external organization to develop and commercialise knowledge, last year securing over £3 billion from external sources. This paper outlines a series of measures to make it easier for individuals, businesses and the public sector to innovate alone or in partnership. As part of a package of support the Government is relaunching the popular Smart brand and will increase the funding to the Technology Strategy Board. Research Councils UK will establish a principles-based framework for the treatment and submission of multi-institutional funding bids. Also the Government will continue to look for other ways to encourage more relationships between universities and business and will work with NESTA to establish a price centre to run, design and facilitate new inducement prices. The Government has also commissioned independent groups of academics and publishers to review the availability of published research, and to develop action plans for making this freely available. It will also create an Open Data Institute to develop semantic web technologies.