Funding boost for innovation in small and medium firms

The move, part of a wider drive by the government to make Britain the best place for product development, is outlined in the white paper Innovation Nation, published by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS). The 101-page document sets out government intentions and strategies to boost the ability of businesses to work more closely with academia and other organisations to help them innovate.

Britain’s innovation policy has been concentrated on high-tech manufacturing, notes the government. While this remains vitally important, increasingly innovation applies to a wider range of products, services, business processes, models, marketing and enabling technologies used by companies, organisations, industries and sectors.

Innovation Nation makes an assessment of the country’s ability to innovate, highlighting the UK's many strengths such as its research base, open economy, excellent universities and good levels of business innovation. However, it also outlines areas in which improvement is needed, such as better skills as well as more investment in R&D and in non-technological innovation.

Government initiatives include:

* a new initiative to provide at least 1,000 'innovation vouchers' every year by 2011, to help fund SMEs to work with a university, further education college or research organisation to develop a new product or service;

* Doubling the number of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships between businesses, universities and colleges;

* Piloting of a new Specialisation and Innovation Fund to boost the capacity of further education colleges to unlock workforce talent and to support businesses in raising innovation potential;

* Expanding the network of National Skills Academies with one academy for every major sector of the economy;

* Piloting a new Innovation Index in 2009 to measure UK innovation and to be managed by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in partnership with the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Design Council, the CBI and others;

* Establishing an Innovation Research Centre in partnership with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), NESTA and the TSB;

* Boosting the ability of small firms to exploit their intellectual property by training Business Link advisors in IP management by the summer of 2009;

* A new Annual Innovation Review to provide an annual assessment of promoting innovation in the public and private sectors;

The white paper comes after the announcement in last month’s budget that the government will look into setting a goal for SMEs to win 30% of all public sector business in the next five years.