New plans to boost private sector investment to put the UK at the front of the global innovation race have been set in a new Innovation Strategy launched by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.
The Innovation Strategy is the government’s long-term vision to put innovation at the heart of building back better. It aims to boost private sector investment in R&D across the whole of the UK, and create the right conditions for all businesses to innovate.
The Strategy identifies areas where the UK has globally competitive R&D and industrial strength which will transform the economy: Advanced materials and Manufacturing; AI, Digital and Advanced Computing; Bioinformatics and Genomics; Engineering Biology; Electronics, Photonics and Quantum; Energy and Environment Technologies; Robotics and Smart Machines.
Highlights of the Innovation Strategy include a commitment from the Government to:
- increase annual public investment on R&D to a record £22 billion
- ensure government procurement is proactive and supportive, providing a route to market for innovative new products and services
- consult on how regulation can ensure that the UK is well-placed to extract the best value from innovation
- commission the Regulatory Horizons Council to consider how best to support innovation through regulation, including looking whether there are a set of high-level guiding principles for regulation that may apply broadly to any sector of innovation
- introduce new High Potential Individual and Scale-up visa routes, and revitalise the Innovator route to attract and retain high-skilled, globally mobile innovation talent
- undertake an independent review to assess landscape of UK organisations undertaking all forms of research, development and innovation
- reduce complexity for innovative companies by developing an online finance and innovation hub between Innovate UK and the British Business Bank within the next 12 months
- expand IP education programme for researchers and launch International IP Services to bolster innovative companies’ and researchers’ ability to confidently collaborate, export and invest overseas
- publish of a new action plan on ‘Standards for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’, promoting standards that enable innovation to flourish
- invest £200 million through the British Business Bank’s Life Sciences Investment Programme to target the growth-stage funding gap faced by UK life science companies
- support 30,000 senior managers of small and medium sized businesses through Help to Grow: Management to boost their business’s performance, resilience, and long-term growth
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