THE NEED

The main critical challenges with developing and sustaining local innovation include the will to change, the authority to act, the capacity to change and access to resources to make that change happen.

“Most new ideas do not come as a flash of inspiration to a lone genius inventor; they come from how people create, combine and share their ideas. The capacity to unlock and harness the talent, energy and imagination of all individuals is crucial to making innovation stronger and more sustainable. The effects of innovative people are self reinforcing: innovative businesses are attracted to highly skilled and creative workforces and, in turn, innovative people are drawn towards exciting and challenging career opportunities. Furthermore, innovative people generate new ideas that require skilled people to implement and exploit them.”
A-“The story of the long tail is really about the economics of abundance – what happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone” in Chris Anderson, The Long Tail, 2005
B-“Research on innovation in other fields has repeatedly pointed to the importance of intermediaries and brokers who can spot, assess and adapt innovations. They see the potential value of innovations that have succeeded elsewhere or how they need to be changed. There is a striking absence of such institutions in the social field and in local government. Instead there is either too much top-down prescription or too casual a view that a thousand flowers should be encouraged to bloom. More work is also needed on developing the key skills for successful intermediaries. In some cases, these skills are closer to investigative journalism and venture capital than traditional bureaucratic skills. They include the skills of spotting, investigating and discovering what elements of a particular innovation are transferable.“
C-“Most new ideas do not come as a flash of inspiration to a lone genius inventor; they come from how people create, combine and share their ideas. The UK’s capacity to unlock and harness the talent, energy and imagination of all individuals is crucial to making innovation stronger and more sustainable. The effects of innovative people are self reinforcing: innovative businesses are attracted to highly skilled and creative workforces and, in turn, innovative people are drawn towards exciting and challenging career opportunities. Furthermore, innovative people generate new ideas that require skilled people to implement and exploit them.”