A welcome from the Chair of Yorkshire Innovation - Richard Gregory

Welcome to the first edition of the new look e-zine that introduces our new brand - Yorkshire Innovation - and our new direction to monitor and advise upon the implementation of the Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS), to help the region create a successful future.

In December, Nesta published a paper entitled “Attacking the Recession: How innovation can fight the downturn”. It highlights the importance of using a crisis to create opportunity from adversity. The report rightly states that organisations and regions that will survive and bounce back quickly will be adaptive and resilient organisations that can find the upturn during a downturn, using the current crisis as a strong stimulus for innovation.

Our challenge as a region is to find the upside in these difficult times. Some new ways of working will help. We need to be far more receptive to open collaboration both within sectors and across sectors. Our networks have to really deliver, not just be talking shops. And we need to be entrepreneurially outward facing, the recession has proved yet again how truly global our economy has become. The next few months will test us to see if Team Yorkshire really is working in terms of the innovation challenge. Are the public and private sectors working together speedily and flexibly enough to help one another to identify new opportunities where ever they may be?

We have rebranded and the Yorkshire Science and Innovation Council becomes Yorkshire Innovation - there couldn’t be a better time to introduce the name change as it tells its own story as we move from strategy into implementation and focus on business outcomes. At the same time we are continuing to encourage the development of internationally competitive new sectors of combined commercial research/business performance and we can be pretty sure that the regional economic landscape will change as a result of this recession, so we need to start looking for and backing new winners now.

The old Yorkshire Science Council led in commissioning work to identify our world leading strengths which has helped in the design and planning of our region’s new innovation networks and, in December 2008, Yorkshire Forward approved the Centre for Low Carbon Futures. We shall be backing this project at a local, regional and national level, using our networks to promote and support the local carbon energy sector in Yorkshire as an opportunity for growth. We already have excellent commercial research and a critical mass of companies engaged in this sector and Yorkshire is emerging as a centre of excellence on a national scale.

I welcome the reconstitution of Yorkshire Innovation, our new business members including the Business Link Yorkshire chief executive Helen West and this reflects our change of direction towards supporting business innovation. We are moving into a step change of activity and our four-year business plan gives us the resources as guardians of the RIS to monitor and evaluate its progress to ensure effective implementation.

The new alignment of priorities across regional development agencies, the Technology Strategy Board, and the national research councils also give us gatekeeper access to more potential national support in the future when we can prove we have world class emerging sectors.

As the Nesta report said, “no one UK region has the strength to withstand the crisis alone, collaboration is essential,” we need to attack the recession, and networks will be critical to our ability to innovate our way out of it.