Building Inclusive Innovation Systems - A review of our Joint Workshop with ERC and IRC

Building inclusive innovation systems as a concept, as an empirical act and as a policy objective has many facets.?To explore complementary perspectives in each of those on October 2nd,?the Enterprise Research Centre (UK) and Innovation & Research Caucus kindly hosted a joint workshop with CIMR on Building Inclusive Innovation Systems at The Shard, London. The idea arose from conversations between Stephen Roper (Warwick University), ERC and IRC and Prof Tim Vorley OBE (Oxford Brookes and IRC), about how best to foster a dialogue between researchers in both organisations.

This workshop for members of both organisations was extremely successful. An outcome was the recognition of potential opportunities for collaboration - and many have already started. What it did was to provide fora for how theoretical ideas inform empirical research across of spectrum of inclusive issues – gender, ethnicity and disability taking into account intersectionality.

In the first session, from ERC-IRC we heard from Stephen Roper about meta-innovation, building innovation into innovation.? From an inclusion perspective, bringing more people into the innovation process and changing the way innovation happens. Jane Bourke considered to what extent adapting societally advantageous practices leads to more innovation.

In the second session, the CIMR team’s Muthu De Silva presented on co-creation and responsible innovation. Muthu highlighted the connection between mission-oriented policies and co-creation, which involves ecosystem actors combining their resources, knowledge, and networks to tackle challenges or seize opportunities beyond their organizational limits. She emphasizes that co-creation varies across different phases of the innovation process—Research, Development, and Transformation. Additionally, she stressed the importance of co-creating among different projects at the transformation stage, as the success of individual projects does not automatically translate to mission success.?

Jacqueline Winstanley FRSA and Helen Lawton Smith discussed their research and outreach on inclusivity and innovation with an intersectional perspective on disabled entrepreneurs and innovation and included a regional focus.

A strong theme throughout was the need to bring together two types of policy – those supporting innovation per se (e.g. Innovate UK) and those that support innovative entrepreneurs per se (DWP and DSIT).? A challenge is to incentivise different section of government to work together.

Colleagues brought other perspectives, such as the opportunities for education and training for innovation – for both entrepreneurs and managers; how to reach marginalised groups so that they be part of innovation systems; ?how entrepreneurship is reshaping standards that regulate entrepreneurial practices; and how to incorporate questions on disability into the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).

Thank you to all the people joining this event, we hope to see you all again soon!

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