“Strengthen the cluster agenda”

David Willetts, the UK's new science minister.

“It’s a better way of thinking about innovation than the sausage machine model,” he told a meeting at the Royal Society in London last week, called to discuss the post-election agenda for science, engineering and innovation, following the change of government earlier this month.  

The UK has some strong clusters and Willetts said it will be, “very important to do all that is possible to develop insights from cluster literature.” One particular appeal is that clusters can provide a low risk environment for high risk projects, Willetts believes. “If something doesn’t work out [an employee] can go and get another job,” he said.

Cluster development allows all the elements and interchanges need for research to be translated through to innovation to be in one place. This could help to overcome the “UK anxiety” that its spending on basic research fails to translate into outcomes.

Willetts also stressed the contribution that the European research agenda makes to innovation, saying a source of Europe’s greatness in science is its diversity. “Collaboration works because people have a different take on a problem.”

While R&D is important for innovation and economic growth, Willetts expressed scepticism of the UK’s proposed new method for putting a value on publicly-funded research, the Research Excellence Framework (REF), under which 25 per cent of the assessment would be based on the economic and social impact.

Most academics hope for and aspire to carry out research that has an impact, such as improving a medical procedure or discovering a drug. “Impact is a very important part of the motivation of academics,” Willetts said. However, the issue is how to develop policy instruments for making impact assessments.

A pilot exercise to investigate the nature of impact and how it should be assessed is taking place at 29 universities currently, with the findings due to be reported this autumn. “I am wary of some of the clunkier attempts to measure impact through REF. I’m not sure the methodology is robust, or commands the widespread support of academics,” Willetts told the meeting of the great and the good of UK science.

Academics and representatives of research funding bodies in the audience will have been pleased to hear Willetts add, “It’s particularly important to value blue skies research and continue to create space for blue skies research to prosper.”

But whatever the sentiment, it is clear the new government will be cutting the UK’s science, research and innovation budget. The first chop last week killed off the proposed Web Sciences Institute, a body that was to be led by Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web; cut a total of £270 million from the regional development agencies; and called for £200 million in efficiency savings from universities. Willetts admitted there will be cuts to the research councils’ budgets in the next public spending round.

Although the evidence about the contribution that science makes to economic growth was “very powerfully set out” both at the meeting and in a series of reports published just before the general election, Willetts said, “There is quite simply a cash constraint. I wish it was different, [but] borrowing 12 – 13 per cent of GDP is not sustainable.”

Willetts promised, “To make the arguments as forcefully as I can about science,” when the cuts are discussed. But he told the meeting, “It doesn’t help to make the case if I set myself up as a shop steward.”