Open Innovation - An Established UK Capaiblity

successful business growth requires transformation of products, processes and organisations. Innovation is the key to achieve these transformations; a key business process that drives success. Over the years, the UK has embraced this fact and has invested significantly in mobilising the excellence in academic research to the benefit of business. The pursuit of innovation defines an important response to the competitive nature of business. Successful innovation can help a business achieve competitive advantage by creating or enhancing successful supply chain relationships. For the open innovation system to work, the UK provides a number of publicly funded support infrastructures, which include, the ‘knowledge infrastructure’ of universities and research institutes; the ‘innovation information infrastructure’ consisting of such organisations as the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), the British Standards Institution(BSI); and the ‘pre-production infrastructure’ consisting of ‘Catapults’ and Innovation and Knowledge Centres (IKCs). The UK is recognised for its world-class understanding of materials and when this is combined with the country’s excellent design capability and the innovation support infrastructures, companies would agree that the UK is the best place to innovate, particularly in materials. Examples of advances in materials technology include the use of advanced composites in aircraft and racing cars to reduce weight, reduce emissions and lower fuel bills. The increasing use of smart polymeric materials for healthcare, sports applications and the fashion industry has catapulted the UK to become one of the top nations in the world for design and innovation.


Knowledge Sharing and Business Collaboration
The UK innovation system has a very strong science base, financial and venture capital markets, and high international integration. To take advantage of what this system offers, innovating companies are increasingly partnering to share risks and S costs, find complementary expertise, gain rapid access to different technologies and knowledge, and thus collaborate as part of networks spread across several sectors. Business innovation rests on learning and the application of knowledge. The establishment of the UK Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs), six years ago, was recognition that Innovation involves the application of knowledge to the production of goods and services. It is often said that Europe’s inability to speedily transform its excellent scientific research into commercial success is due to the lack of sufficient capacity to transform knowledge into products and services. The importance of both explicit and tacit knowledge to the innovation process is core to the activities of the Materials Knowledge Transfer Network, working together with the plastics industry. In helping to create a culture for innovation and a market for knowledge, the KTN facilitates the free flow of researchers, ideas and technologies in an open environment to enable a better and stronger collaboration between industry and academics. The KTN articulates how companies can apply processes and technologies to build and sustain effective relationships within the supply chain while at the same time searching for enduring competitive advantages. Businesses must often step outside their own boundaries in seeking to solve innovation-related problems. To do this, businesses are connected with a wide array of partners, from both the private and public sectors. The Knowledge Network for the Plastics Industry includes universities, research institutes, product designers, investors and industry players. Sharing knowledge is seen as the basis for further invention and business improvement whilst giving businesses incentives to invest and to innovate.


Connecting with Product Design
The creative use of advanced materials by product designers is an important contribution to many business innovations. Innovating with materials goes much further than supporting and strengthening scientific research and development. Through the Materials KTN’s design initiatives, the KTN is helping to equip young designers and polymer scientists with many vital skills and attitudes for innovation, including problemsolving, curiosity, interrogation skills and multidisciplinary teamwork. By bringing multidisciplinary teams from across materials science, technology, design and the arts to tackle a problem together, the innovation process is ccelerated.



Funding Support
The UK offers wide-ranging programmes and tools, each with different strengths, to support businesses on the innovation journey. These programmes focus on providing funding for commercially focused R&D as well as offering insight and information into technology development and the challenges facing society, which present business with opportunities for growth. Funding ranges from support for small proof-of-concept grants and feasibility studies through to large multi-partner collaborative R&D and demonstration projects. All types of businesses qualify for support, ranging from prestart-up, start-up and early stage micro businesses, to large multinationals. There are different funding models available depending on the specific needs of companies, sectors and technologies. There is a supportive route also for UK businesses to access European support for innovation and technology development. There is an increasing emphasis on addressing the need for closer integration of the research phase with the preproduction phase with the establishment of Innovation and Knowledge Centres (IKCs) and ‘Catapults’. The ‘Catapults’ are a new network of physical centres designed to advance innovation in specific fields. The centres enable businesses to access the best research and technical expertise, infrastructure and equipment. Each centre focuses on a field of technology or technology application in which the UK has particular academic and business strength. Whereas, IKCs operate at an earlier stage than Catapult centres, they offer a shared space and entrepreneurial environment in which researchers, potential customers and professionals from academia and business can work side-by-side on commercial applications of emerging research.


Removing Barriers to Innovation
Depending on how regulations and standards are structured and applied, they can promote or dampen innovation, and these areas are therefore of concern to business and central to UK Government policy. The Materials KTN also helps to identify key horizontal issues (such as regulation, standardisation, public procurement, access to finance, skills & education etc.) that hold back the transformation of advanced materials research into industrial innovation. This support includes the development of an action plan and policy recommendations to address the identified needs and challenges, working jointly with the responsible government agency that has the responsibility to follow-up and implement recommendations.

For further information contact www.materialsktn.net