One of the economic priority areas for the West Midlands region is innovation.
The future prosperity of the West Midlands is highly dependent on gaining the benefits of the range of research and innovation undertaken in our Higher Education Institutions and in many other public and private sector organisations.
The government's Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (now part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) published the Innovation Nation White Paper in March 2008. The White Paper recognises that:
“Innovation is essential to the UK’s future economic prosperity and quality of life. To raise productivity, foster competitive businesses, meet the challenges of globalisation and to live within environmental limits, the UK must excel in all types of innovation.”
Thematic dialogue on the benefits of innovation
As part of our State of the Region dialogues, we coordinated a thematic dialogue between September 2008 and April 2009 to help develop the evidence base and inform policy in the area of innovation.
The dialogue resulted in an innovation day workshop. Four papers were presented at that workshop — slides and audio by three of the speakers are available on our blog:
The papers also formed the basis for the State of the Region thematic report, The Importance of Innovation in a Changing Economy (pdf, 580kb), published by the Observatory in July 2009.
More on State of the Region dialogues
The dialogue on innovation in a changing economy was completed in 2009.
You can keep up-to-date on developments for current State of the Region dialogues in 2010 via: