A new direction for Innovate UK?

The UK Government has today announced the appointment of a new CEO for Innovate UK, the 'innovation agency' that is now part of the larger UKRI. I was asked by Research Fortnight to comment on the appointment (that piece is linked here) and, as usual, thought I'd put the longer version of my first thoughts here in case anyone is interested. According to the press release Indro Mukerjee is "a highly experienced technology executive and business leader with a track record of leading innovation and technology commercialisation at businesses of all sizes across the world – from publicly listed and multinational corporations to new venture and private equity backed technology companies".

It doesn't seem that unusual to me that they’ve looked for business/industrial experience, and according to his bio he does have some engineering background to bring to the job alongside the corporate, private equity and restructuring experience. The fact that he is described as the new CEO, rather than 'Executive Chair' (the title used since the establishment of UKRI) is interesting - I would guess that he may have made this a condition of him accepting the job.

I think the more interesting part of the announcement is this bit:

“Mukerjee will take up the post immediately and will be tasked with transitioning Innovate UK from a grant funding body to an agency focused on driving economic growth by working with companies to de-risk, enable and support innovation, while unleashing private sector investment into research and development”

Innovate UK has always suffered from confusion (on the part of politicians, policy-makers and indeed its own staff) over whether it is a kind of technological research council (which is effectively the role it was originally created to play), an 'innovation agency' (both of which roles have an innovation system or economy-wide focus) or a business support agency, the latter being focused on helping individual firms improve their performance. There are clear tensions between these system-wide goals and the goal of helping individual firms (though few in the UK seem to want to acknowledge their existence). The press release rhetoric emphasises the 'innovation agency' role but the passage quoted above strongly implies that the idea of business support is winning out - perhaps not surprising as we seek to recover out of a pandemic-induced crisis.

It’s good to get some clarity one way or the other, though I worry that the UK still very much needs a technology research council and wonder how this very obvious gap in our innovation system will be filled if Innovate UK goes further down the business support route.

At the same time I’m skeptical that a single 'innovation agency', however fashionable an idea, makes much sense across all the diverse sectors of the UK economy, some of the strongest of which do not depend on R&D for their innovation activities. A one-size-fits-all model is unlikely to fit any sector very well. 

The emphasis on business support, and away from grant funding, also arguably sits ill with the location of Innovate UK within UKRI, which is effectively a super-research council. I can well imagine that Mukerjee will be hoping to move Innovate UK out of UKRI if he can possibly persuade ministers that this makes sense.

(Edited at 16:31 to fix a few typos)