Informing Development of the UK Place-based R&D Strategy: Research England/UKRI and WMREDI expert evidence forum

The West Midlands Regional Economic Development Institute (WMREDI) at the University of Birmingham hosted a closed-forum for Research England (UKRI) to examine the evidence base for a place-based R&D strategy.

The following questions guided discussions:

- What evidence is available (or is needed) to show that different kinds of regional impact result from different kinds of R&D investments / interventions?
- What should the research and innovation system – universities, businesses, research organisation and other intermediaries - do more of to support economic growth in their region?
- How can we ensure different parts of the UK have the mix of interventions they need to enable R&D-led growth?
- What are the major critical dependencies for R&D policy levers at the national and the local level? Is there evidence to show which different levers, incentives, mechanisms and critical dependencies make a difference to scale of impact and/or outcomes?
- What does UKRI, government and local leadership need to do to ensure research and innovation can play a powerful role in levelling up the country?

These reports provide a summary of this work.

Contributors providing briefings incorporated into this paper:

 Professor Riccardo Crescenzi (LSE)

 Dr. Kieron Flanagan (Manchester)

 Professor Helen Lawton Smith (Birkbeck)

 Professor Maria Savona (Sussex)

 Dr. Elvira Uyarra (Manchester)

 Dr Anna Valero (LSE)

 Professor Slavo Radosevic (UCL)

Other Discussants:

 Professor Paul Nightingale (Sussex)

 Professor Andres Rodriguez-Pose (LSE)

Other academic participants:

 Professor Richard Harris (Durham)

 Professor Neil Lee (LSE)

 Professor Kevin Morgan (Cardiff)

 Raquel Ortega-Argilles (City-REDI, Birmingham)

 (Chantale Tippett (for Juan Mateos-Garcia -Nesta))

 (Antonio Andreoni (IIPP))