Posted By
Birgitte Andersen
28 September 2012
Five years since the collapse of Northern Rock and the start of the credit crunch, the austerity policy has lost sight of what exactly drives growth – innovation. With the UK in a double-dip recession and the Government’s budget deficit increasing, the Big Innovation Centre’s fringe events will ask - are we going far and fast enough to create a 21st-centruy framework for recovery, growth and prosperity?
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Posted By
Andrew Sissons
27 September 2012
The headline from today’s GDP statistics – that the contraction in Q2 has been revised from 0.5% to 0.4% - is about the least interesting statistic in there. Today’s release, the Quarterly National Accounts, is packed full of numbers that give us a clue about how and why the UK economy is shrinking.
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Posted By
Anna Kharbanda
25 September 2012
Throughout history heavyweights have come together to fight about the big issues of the day. From the boxing bouts of Ali v Frazier or Foreman v Ali to the political and budgetary battles of Clinton v Bush and Osborne v Balls. Yesterday’s fringe - It’s innovation, stupid - hosted by the Big Innovation Centre at the Liberal Democrat conference, was no different in leaving its mark.
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Posted By
Spencer Thompson
20 September 2012
Today’s BIS announcement on reducing the regulatory burden on businesses contains a lot of interesting proposals, around high-growth, or ‘challenger’, businesses, around intellectual property, and more. One area that BIS, alongside the IEA’s Mark Littlewood, has looked at is peer-to-peer (P2P) lending.
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Posted By
Birgitte Andersen
13 September 2012
The main thrust of David Willetts’s speech today at the Universities UK conference is welcome. Two points strike me which relate to the innovation and knowledge ecosystems...
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Posted By
Charles Levy
13 September 2012
In a speech to the Universities UK conference today David Willetts reiterated just how difficult this year has been for many institutions. For all involved it has been a year of unprecedented change. Tuition reforms (read: higher fees), advancement towards the new Research Excellence Framework for measuring impact, announcements on the importance of open access to academic publications, changes to the fundamental definition of who can hold university status, new calls on universities to support their local areas and Local Enterprise Partnerships, and the unfortunate visa situation at London Met have all happened against the backdrop of a double dip recession of unprecedented scale, and a very tough labour market for recent graduates.
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Posted By
Birgitte Andersen and Hiba Sameen
12 September 2012
Vince Cable’s industrial strategy launched yesterday at Imperial College shifted the government’s focus from the short-term to the long-term, taking a strategic approach to the government’s long-term investment in the British economy. He outlined the Coalition’s long-term vision in supporting sustainable economic growth, identifying 5 key areas: access to finance, building partnerships with key sectors, supporting emerging technologies, skills and procurement.
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Posted By
Prateek Sureka
12 September 2012
Monday was a very interesting day for many reasons. There were two major report launches around innovation: one about the Value of Open Innovation, and one from the Big Innovation Centre and Nesta. Oh, and not forgetting the London Olympic parade around the city.
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