Posted By
Dr Lucy Montgomery
27 July 2012
Few people working within Universities will have missed the recent furore surrounding academic publishing. What has been termed ‘the academic spring’ started with an angry blog post by a Cambridge based mathematician about the rising costs of peer reviewed journal subscriptions and the monopolistic practices of journal publishers. Last week it culminated in the announcement by the UK Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, of ‘the most radical shakeup of publishing since the invention of the internet.’
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Posted By
Spencer Thompson
24 July 2012
Design is a definite strength of the UK economy. A wide variety of businesses and industries use design in order to create new products, improve existing ones, and to make their business processes more efficient. Today the Intellectual Property Office is publishing our research on UK design as a global industry, which sets out the contribution design makes to UK exports, and offers recommendations as to how this important activity can be best supported by intellectual property (IP) policy.
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Posted By
Charles Levy
24 July 2012
Today (Tuesday 24th July) the Lords Science and Technology Committee published a detailed report into Higher Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths subjects (STEM). The paper rightly highlights that we simply don’t have enough good quality science graduates to drive innovation and growth.
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Posted By
Spencer Thompson
19 July 2012
Today’s retail figures make very interesting reading. We know consumers are facing unprecedented squeezes on their income, and, despite recent improvements, unemployment remains high. But despite the lack of money in consumer’s pockets, retail seems to be holding up, or at least treading water, with both sales volumes and sales values up in the 12 months to June 2011.
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Posted By
Dr Lucy Montgomery
18 July 2012
This week’s announcement in The Guardian of what is being billed as “the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet” highlights once again the truly transformative power of networked digital technology.
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Posted By
Spencer Thompson
16 July 2012
Today the government announced its response to the Finch report on widening access to research findings, accepting all but one of the recommendations, meaning that in the near future all taxpayer-funded research will be immediately available for free public access.
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Posted By
Big Innovation Centre
13 July 2012
Will Hutton speaks at Birkbeck's Business Week 2012 in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics.
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Posted By
Spencer Thompson
11 July 2012
The shifting patterns of what things consumers want to buy, and the extent to which UK producers can meet that demand, determine how much the UK economy benefits from greater consumer spending. Today we are publishing research on this subject, highlighting several worrying trends in the UK’s ability to satisfy consumer demand.
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Posted By
Prateek Sureka
10 July 2012
The same UN that that was formed to avoid another World War has now stepped into the ongoing patent war between the tech superpowers, where no side looks willing to give up the fight.
The latest development in this ‘war’ came when Apple successfully blocked the US sale of Google’s flagship smartphone: the Galaxy Nexus. The judge ruled that Google, “has shown a likelihood of establishing both infringement and validity".
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Posted By
Andrew Sissons and Spencer Thompson
03 July 2012
The UK economy is undergoing a profound and alarming downward shift in its productivity and competitiveness. The problem has deep roots; to put it simply, we must become better at creating new markets.
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