UK’s Tories call for Innovative Projects Agency

The UK needs to get away from stimulating the supply side and preaching to the demand side, and put in place a new national approach to innovation, based on a significant reorganisation of funding and structures to balance user driven-research against basic research.

This shift would be embodied in an Innovative Projects Agency (IPA) run on the premise that the most important person for an innovator is a customer, and that revenue is the best form of investment capital.

“We need to see innovation as a broadly spread capacity that applies across the economy, not just in traditional science and technology-intensive areas,” said the author of the report, former UK science minister Ian Taylor MP, adding “We need a new approach in the UK, where we bridge the gap between conceiving ideas and turning those ideas into products and services.”

Favoured innovation projects

The Conservatives' Innovative Projects Agency will be expected to support a number of time-limited projects at any one time, each of which will chosen on the basis that it will:

• Put established research to work to achieve hard and measurable targets within five years
• Act as the first customer for challenging new products or services
• improve cross-fertilisation of ideas and emerging technologies
• Span physical, mathematical, biological and social sciences, including engineering as well as working with various sectors including manufacturing, creative, services and financial companies
• Address known social and environmental needs
• Fit with other government priorities
• Engender enthusiasm in the scientific community and inspire young people.

To achieve this, the Conservative party’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics group, wants to set up the Innovative Projects Agency with an initial budget of £ 1billion. This will come from absorbing the existing Technology Strategy Board, and taking over some other functions and budgets currently controlled by research councils, other central government departments and regional development agencies.

Role models

The IPA has a number of role models including the US DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), France’s OSEO and the Finnish agency TEKES.

“We have drawn on the experience of other countries to design the IPA and avoid pitfalls,” said Taylor. “The US DARPA is a good role model but restricted to defence.  We have also looked at how innovation is stimulated in Japan and in other parts of Europe to pick the best from all of their experiences.”

The formation of the IPA would not imply reducing spending on basic research. “Instead we intend to raise the status of those who find viable applications for ideas arising from research, or who can turn such ideas into products valued by customers,” said Taylor. “Creating something that is user driven is what distinguishes innovation from basic research.”

In an earlier report, the STEM group proposed the use of demand driven procurement as a spur to innovation, and Taylor said this approach will be complementary to the activities of the IPA. “Through the IPA and through smart procurement we will ensure that science is better applied and pulled through.”

The overall aim of the IPA will be to create a bridge between basic research and industries and products of tomorrow. It will also have a brief to target resources to solve social and economic problems.

“The IPA will be needs-driven and tolerant of risk. It will ensure that when the market cannot respond quickly to scientific and technological change, there is an effective mechanism for the state to ensure that someone does,” said Taylor.

But he was careful to note that the IPA is not a substitute for the research councils, nor a rival to them. “Put simply, the research councils support research; the IPA would procure development.”

The vision is to set the IPA’s goals, terms of reference and budgets and leave it to choose its projects and contractors, independent of government and civil servants.

To help identify need, the IPA will establish a Knowledge Application Team consisting people on secondment from business, academia and other government departments, to identify gaps in innovation.  

None of the IPA’s budget of around £1 billion per year will be new money, but will come from subsuming existing funding, including, the Technology Strategy Board (£178 million); DTI Knowledge Transfer Programmes (£94 million); part of the DTI’s innovation budget (£73 million); the UK High Technology Fund (£126 million); part of other government departments’ R & D budgets; and part of regional development agencies science and innovation budgets.

In addition, the reach of the IPA will enable it to pull in private and voluntary sector funding, including working with research charities. It may also be possible for the IPA to assist in leveraging EU Research funds and technology platforms.

Taylor says the strategy is entirely compatible with European Union public procurement rules and consistent with the Commission’s latest ten-point innovation plan.