Governments like pilot innovation projects: competitions get created, contenders build multi-organisational teams and write a bid, winners get chosen and capital gets spent in a rather bureaucratic and highly documented way. A one-off novel achievement is reached bringing academics, businesses and sometimes a local authority together in a triple helix. A press announcement is made, a photo taken, and then, more often than not, the project ends and the capital expenditure moulders and dies, and then innovation funders move onto the next new shiny pilot project to keep up with the new new thing.
Public officials like to call this the innovation economy, and billions of pounds of public money gets spent this way. Quite a few organisations have become slick at bidding for, winning, and delivering these projects in a compliant way. Beyond media announcements, and bragging rights, what it’s good for is harder to discern.
The University of Bristol’s impressive Smart Internet Lab won its fair share of innovation competitions. It began to think deeply about creating a more sustainable approach to innovation funding. It collaborated with GroundedThinking to produce a sustainable way to bring together many ICT pilot projects and create an ongoing innovative network.
Here’s the first attempt at a plan, bringing together two Universities and two city regions.