Proposals for a Scottish Centre for Creativity and Innovation are under consideration, the Government has confirmed to Holyrood.
The news comes on the heels of a National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) meeting on innovation last week, which included a briefing that recommended that Scotland become a “hub” for innovation, as well as calling for a Cabinet-level Scottish minister dedicated to innovation to work across portfolios.
These ideas were originally floated at a Scottish Futures Forum creative industries event in early September hosted by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).
A government spokeswoman said that plans for a Centre for Creativity and Innovation were not “concrete” but that the idea was definitely under consideration.
Jonathan Kestenbaum, chief executive of NESTA, welcomed the news: “Scotland promises to be a breeding ground for new ideas but unless innovation is shown to be a key priority and unless people are encouraged to collaborate on new approaches, business and the public sector will do little more than pay lip service to it.
“A Centre for Creativity and Innovation would be an important step in driving innovation in the nation, and we welcome the fact that [the] Scottish Government is now prepared to consider it”.
However, the higher education sector reacted unenthusiastically to the news, coming as it does in the wake of the budget, which gave universities just a fraction of the funding they had asked for. A spokesperson for Universities Scotland said that it had to be taken into account that Scotland was different from England when it came to looking at making high quality innovation available to business.
“We are also unlike England in that we have an enormously collaborative structure for carrying out cutting-edge research. The NESTA recommendations relate to a sector in England which hasn’t had the policy innovations we’ve pushed here in Scotland. The key thing is the volume of research we are able to do.”
Another source said that given that universities were responsible for almost all successful research and development in Scotland, giving higher education such a poor funding settlement and then considering a Centre for Innovation was, at best, “tokenistic”.
Niall Stuart of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, however, supported the notion.
"Scotland has made great strides in terms of links between academia and business in the last few years, but anything that can speed up the commercialisation of research and innovations from colleges and universities can only be good for the economy. Equally, businesses could undoubtedly benefit from collaborating with potential competitors to share ideas and market information.
"One area we’d like to see the centre look at is public procurement reform. There is a threat to many small businesses from aggregated procurement spend, so we’d like to see this new centre look at how small businesses can work together to bid jointly for public sector contracts that would otherwise be beyond their reach," he added.
"By doing so, we will undoubtedly ensure that more of the value of Scottish public sector spend [stays] in the country."
The original NESTA briefing says: “The Scottish Government needs to develop a policy framework that supports all forms of innovation, led by a new minister for Innovation in the Scottish Government. This minister should consider creating a Scottish Innovation Centre to catalyse the nation’s ecology of innovation.”
NESTA also called on the Scottish Government to develop its own annual Innovation Index to guide policy development.
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