Innovation

Innovation – developing new processes, products and markets, often through incremental change – is vital across all sectors. Increasing the level of research & development activity and knowledge transfer between the research community and industry are key drivers of innovative activity, particularly in science and technology related sectors, helping to boost productivity and sustainable growth.*

The exploitation of new ideas has long been recognised as a major driver of economic growth. Helping more companies from across a diverse range of industries to engage in innovation activity will be vital if we are to help Scotland increase its global competitiveness.

Scottish Enterprise will work with growth companies, the Scottish Funding Council, higher education and other research organisations to help support a culture of continuous innovation and maximise Scotland’s ability to compete internationally. We will help these companies exploit new ideas either through direct assistance or by helping them to develop relationships with other businesses and/or our strong academic and research base. We will also help to commercialise ideas from the research base and help turn those ideas into new businesses or to licence those ideas into existing Scottish-based growth businesses to increase productivity and improve performance.

Our primary purpose in our innovation activity is two fold: enabling more account managed companies to generate increased growth from the application of new products, processes, business models and markets, and stimulating innovation within and across priority industries.

The following objectives will focus our activities where they can add most value:

  • Supporting and encouraging innovation in the companies which we work with, focusing in particular on account managed companies and priority industries;
  • Improving the market demand for and exploitation of new licences and collaborative ventures;
  • Exploiting more economic value within the Scottish economy from academic spin outs;
  • Supporting a culture of continuous innovation.

To achieve these objectives priority will be given to the following areas:

*The Government Economic Strategy