The UK government has commissioned a new review of the institutional landscape in which research, development and innovation (RD&I) is carried out, led by Sir Paul Nurse. In response to an invitation for views, Eoin O’Sullivan, from Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing, and I submitted this brief paper:
The role of intermediate RD&I institutes in building regional and sectoral innovation capabilities (PDF).
Our paper argues that what’s underdeveloped in the UK’s research landscape are research and development institutes whose mission goes beyond just doing applied research, to encompass a wider range of activities to build the innovation and manufacturing capabilities of regional economies that are currently underperforming. There are many international examples of this kind of institution, which carry out workforce development and innovation diffusion functions as well as applied research, and there are lessons from these other countries that the UK could usefully learn.
Here’s the first section of our paper:
The place of intermediate institutions in the UK’s RD&I landscape
National innovation systems have a complex landscape of different types of research institutes with different missions and goals. These include both research universities and institutes devoted to fundamental science, and public sector research establishments (PSREs), which support government strategic goals. A majority of research, development and innovation takes place in the private sector, in firms’ own laboratories, and in for-profit contract research organisations. It is this private sector innovation that most directly drives productivity growth. Public and private sector R&D can be connected in intermediate RD&I institutes, which carry out more applied research, often as a public/private partnerships, as well as taking a wider role in building regional and sectoral private sector capability, through the promotion of innovation diffusion and skills development.
In the absence of government intervention, the private sector will systematically invest less in R&D than would be optimal for the whole economy, due to the inability of firms to capture all of the benefits. This market failure provides the justification for government investment in R&D. In many successful innovation economies, intermediate RD&I institutes play a vital role. Examples include the Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany, the Industrial Research and Technology Institute in Taiwan, and VTT in Finland.
In the UK, basic research is carried out in a strong university base, supplemented by some stand-alone institutes, such as the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge and the Crick Institute in London. The PSRE sector has diminished in size over the past few decades, because of privatisations and absorption of some institutes into universities, but it retains some strong institutions such as the National Physical Laboratory and the Meteorological Office.
The perceived weakness of the UK’s landscape in intermediate research and innovation institutions led to the development of the Catapult Network in the 2010’s, modelled in some respects on Germany’s Fraunhofer network, though not as yet commensurate with it in scale.
Discussion of the purpose of Intermediate RD&I institutions in the UK, such as the Catapult Network, has focused on their role carrying out applied research in collaboration with industry. The purpose of this note (which summarises the argument of a longer working paper current under preparation for the Productivity Institute) is to draw attention to the wider range of functions that such institutions carry out in other nations, and in particular their role in supporting economic development in regions with lower productivity.
The rest of the paper can be found here: The role of intermediate RD&I institutes in building regional and sectoral innovation capabilities (PDF).