Open Innovation backed by UK Government Minister

January 4, 2012 By IdeaConnection

In a wide ranging speech on universities, research and innovation UK science minister David Willetts offered strong support for open innovation.

Acknowledging the UK’s reputation for failing to capitalize on many of the great ideas that are generated by its universities the minister outlined areas the government is keen to promote.

“We are reforming IP and backing open innovation in our universities. We are liberating them from the idea that the only measure of their contribution to the wider economy is setting up a tech transfer office and then counting patents.”

“We are extending Innovation vouchers to encourage more small businesses to draw on the resource available in our universities.”

The minister’s speech at the Policy Exchange think tank on 4th Jan 2012 was also a wake-up call to sluggish businesses who contribute to the county’s malaise of failing to turn ideas into winning products and services.

In setting out his vision for the UK’s innovation future Mr Willetts highlighted current problems in high and low tech business sectors: “Part of Britain’s weak productivity performance has been low levels of investment and innovation in some of these sectors.”

But now is not the time to be defeatist and he went onto to say how business could be transformed by absorbing new technologies, but not necessarily those that have been developed for specific sectors.  He illustrated his point with an example of how an open innovation approach could help agriculture:

“Increasingly satellites and space-based systems will transform the accuracy of the spreading of fertilizer and patterns of planting in agriculture. These changes will happen not as the result of technologies developed specifically for say the agricultural sector but as a result of the application of technologies developed elsewhere.”

It’s always encouraging when a government minister acknowledges the power and potential of OI.

You can read the full text of the speech here.


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