Innovation

Innovation is commonly defined as 'the successful exploitation of new ideas'. In order to compete successfully, businesses must be innovative.

The West Midlands is rightly proud of its heritage as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, where innovation drove the change that would transform the world. The modern postal service originated here as did DNA profiling and LED technology and today our region has a number of examples of world-class research and development.

Companies like JCB and Jaguar-Land Rover are constantly innovating and competing on the global stage while our region is also home to world-class institutions such as QinetiQ, RAPRA and CERAM as well as powerful research facilities at the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick.

The West Midlands faces major challenges in innovation. It is estimated that in 2004, the West Midlands saw an investment of £21 billion on research and development, around 1.5 per cent of our region's GDP.

The Government has set an ambitious target for each English region to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on research and development by 2014, which would mean the West Midlands' annual spend would need to increase by £15 billion to £36 billion by 2014.

Launched in 2004, the Innovation and Technology Council advises the Board of Advantage West Midlands on issues around innovation and technology. Its strategy is to reinvigorate the West Midlands’ economy through the exploitation of emerging, innovative technologies in existing and new globally competitive businesses.

The Innovation and Technology Council has identified the five themes of Energy, Healthcare Technology, Transportation Technology, Advanced Materials and Digital Media as a prime focus for regional innovation activity.

Birmingham is a Science City.  In 2005 the Government defined Science Cities as “those with strong science-based assets – such as a major university or centre of research excellence – which have particular potential …[to] attract a critical mass of innovative businesses and become drivers of regional growth”.

Six Science Cities have been announced to date (Manchester, York and Newcastle in 2004; Birmingham, Nottingham and Bristol in 2005).  The vision for Birmingham Science City is that it “will develop and use science and technology to improve the prosperity and quality of life of the city-region, the West Midlands and the UK”. 

Advantage West Midlands is leading the activity and is making significant investments itself to support this vision.

There are many projects operating in the region for businesses seeking support to innovate their processes or products.  The best way of accessing these is through the Business Link West Midlands who can signpost the current activities. Companies often perceive that innovation is risky and accessing finance from third parties can be important to enable innovation to happen.  Advantage West Midlands has helped to establish a range of finance mechanisms to help businesses develop, these are available from the West Midlands Finance website.  R&D Tax Credits are an important route to raise levels of business Research and Development (R&D) and encourage business innovation.

The Department of Trade and Industry, its Technology Strategy Board and the Research Councils, run various schemes to support research and development with universities that can lead to new products, processes and services.

The European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) bundles all research-related EU initiatives together under one roof, playing a crucial role in reaching the goals of growth, competitiveness and employment.  This offers a range of potential schemes to support R&D with European partners.

Universities are important sources of innovation, in the ways that they support existing businesses, spin out new businesses and provide highly trained people. In the West Midlands, we have examples of world-class activity and proximity to a partner university can be important to achieving effective collaboration. The regional universities are: Aston, Birmingham, Coventry, Harper Adams, Keele, Staffordshire, UCE, Warwick, Wolverhampton and Worcester. Contact KE can support West Midlands’ businesses by matching company needs with the skills and expertise available from the region’s universities.