From Innovation Assets to Investable Places: Insights from the UK Global R&D and Science Investment Summit

The relationship between innovation and place is a central pillar of economic development policy. Innovation depends not only on research excellence, industrial competitiveness and investment attraction, but also on the ecosystems, networks and relationships that connect them.

This was certainly evident at the UK Global R&D and Science Investment Summit held at the Royal Society, which I attended this week. Sessions covered investment, innovation, spinouts, regional growth, the role of universities, industrial strategy, infrastructure and place-based development. Across these varied discussions, a common focus emerged: the mechanisms through which knowledge, talent, institutions, capital and communities are connected to generate innovation, investment and growth.

From Assets to Ecosystems

For many years, innovation policy has focused on the accumulation of assets: universities, science parks, research facilities, infrastructure and high-growth firms. While these remain important, the discussion is increasingly shifting towards how these assets are organised, connected and mobilised within innovation ecosystems. The emphasis is not simply on ‘what’ places possess, but on how effectively those capabilities interact, the quality of the relationships between them and the extent to which they are aligned around shared objectives. The presence of research excellence, entrepreneurial activity or investment capital does not automatically lead to innovation-led growth. What matters is whether these elements are sufficiently connected to create pathways through which ideas, people, knowledge and resources can travel and interact.  The challenge is not simply one of accumulation, it is one of organisation and orchestration.

Reconsidering the Role of Community

One of the more thought-provoking discussions during the Summit concerned the role of community within innovation ecosystems.  Innovation policy has traditionally focused on relationships between universities, industry and government. The Quadruple Helix model extends this framework by recognising communities and civil society as a fourth component of the innovation system. Whilst the model is not new, the discussion highlighted that community participation is still often treated as peripheral to innovation rather than intrinsic to it – with many models failing to meaningfully embed it within their ecosystem, instead treating it as a box ticking exercise.

Several contributors argued that community engagement should be considered from the outset rather than treated as a downstream outcome of innovation activity. Importantly, this implies not only participation but accountability, with clear objectives and measures of success attached to community engagement efforts. One panellist remarked: “Build and they will come. Build community and they will stay.” Physical infrastructure can be created, research facilities can be funded, new buildings can be constructed. Yet the long-term success of innovation ecosystems often depends upon less tangible factors: trust, participation, identity, belonging and the density of relationships between people and organisations.  Viewed in this way, community engagement is not simply a social objective. It becomes part of the infrastructure through which innovation ecosystems function. 

In many ecosystem development initiatives, community engagement is viewed as something that happens once infrastructure has been created or investment has been secured.  However, places that build physical assets without building social capital may find themselves with infrastructure but not ecosystems. If innovation is understood as a collective process, then communities cannot be viewed solely as beneficiaries of growth, they must also be considered participants in its creation.

Specialisation, Spillovers and Ecosystem Development

One of the more interesting discussions concerned the increasingly porous boundaries between sectors and the implications this has for innovation ecosystems. Capabilities developed within gaming, animation, immersive media, simulation and real-time visualisation, for example, are increasingly being deployed beyond their original context. Skills associated with game development are finding applications within manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, engineering, training and urban planning. Technologies originally developed for entertainment are now contributing to digital twins, virtual training environments, simulation tools and immersive collaboration platforms.

The significance of this lies not simply in the growth of particular sectors, but in the spillover effects they generate elsewhere in the economy. Innovation is often discussed in sectoral terms. Yet some of the most interesting forms of innovation occur at the boundaries between sectors, where ideas, technologies and capabilities migrate from one context to another. The movement of knowledge across sectors has the ability to create exponential value far beyond the industry in which it originated, generating benefits across multiple domains and creating connections that strengthen the wider system.  Ecosystem development should not simply be viewed in the context of supporting individual sectors. It should focus on understanding how knowledge, capabilities and innovation can diffuse through an economy and how those connections can be strengthened to create strength.

The Politics of Connectivity

Another important theme emerging from the Summit was the growing emphasis on connectivity. Universities are collaborating across regions. National innovation organisations are seeking ways to connect local strengths with wider strategic priorities. Innovation districts are increasingly forming networks with one another, reflecting a recognition that no place operates in isolation.  At one level, this appears straightforward. Greater connectivity is generally assumed to be beneficial.  However, there is a tension here. Places compete. They compete for investment, talent, funding and attention. At the same time, they depend upon collaboration, knowledge exchange and shared infrastructure. The result is a complex dynamic in which places must simultaneously differentiate and connect.

This tension was particularly evident in discussions around innovation districts and regional ecosystems. Places are encouraged to develop distinctive specialisations and competitive advantages, yet they are also expected to contribute to wider regional and national systems. The result is a form of cooperative competition in which success depends both on differentiation and connectivity. 

As places become increasingly specialised, they also become increasingly dependent upon external relationships. Connectivity therefore becomes more than a mechanism for growth; it becomes a mechanism for resilience. The most successful ecosystems may be those that are not only well connected, but connected in diverse ways that allow them to access new markets, new knowledge and new opportunities as conditions change.  The objective is not merely to create successful places in isolation, but to understand how local specialisation interacts with regional, national and international systems.

Scale Through Connectivity – An MSI Perspective

A further implication of these discussions concerns smaller, more remote or less visible places. Innovation policy is often implicitly shaped by assumptions of scale: large universities, dense urban economies, major research facilities, mature investor networks and established concentrations of firms. Yet many places do not start from this position. Rural areas, island economies and smaller regions may possess significant capabilities, but these are often dispersed, under-recognised or insufficiently connected. This does not mean they lack innovation potential. It means their ecosystems may need to be developed differently.

For smaller places, the task is rarely to replicate large metropolitan innovation districts. A more realistic, and often more powerful approach, is to identify distinctive areas of capability, connect existing actors more deliberately and build outward-facing networks that compensate for limitations of scale.  In this context, ecosystem development becomes a process of making latent capability visible. It requires mapping existing strengths, building trust between institutions, creating pathways for skills development, supporting local firms to access external markets and connecting local specialisms into wider regional, national and international systems.

Traditional cluster theory has often emphasised agglomeration: the concentration of firms, institutions, talent and infrastructure within a single geography. While these dynamics remain important, digital connectivity, increasing specialisation and the growing importance of networks suggest alternative possibilities.  Rather than seeking to build every capability in one location, smaller places may derive greater advantage from developing distinctive specialisations and connecting them to complementary capabilities elsewhere.  For smaller places, ecosystem development is often framed in terms of overcoming disadvantage: insufficient scale, limited resources or geographic remoteness. Yet an alternative perspective is possible. Smaller places are often more agile, more collaborative and better able to align institutions around shared objectives. Their challenge is not necessarily a lack of capability, but ensuring that capability is visible, connected and able to participate in wider systems. In this model, competitiveness is derived not from self-sufficiency but from participation within wider systems of innovation.

Regions, cities and communities can develop complementary specialisations while gaining strength through connectivity to wider systems of knowledge exchange, investment, talent and collaboration.  Scale can be achieved solely through concentration, but it can also be achieved through connectivity.  The strength of an ecosystem is not simply derived from the assets located within a particular geography, but from the quality of the relationships that connect those assets to wider systems. Success depends less on building everything in one place and more on understanding how different capabilities can be connected to create value across a wider geography.

From Innovation Assets to Investable Places

The most successful ecosystems are not necessarily those with the greatest concentration of assets, but those that are most effective at connecting and mobilising the capabilities they already possess.

For smaller places, ecosystem development is often framed as a challenge of overcoming limitations: limited scale, resources or geographic remoteness. Yet competitiveness need not depend upon replicating the scale or density of larger centres. Instead, it it can be achieved by developing distinctive specialisations, building strong relationships and positioning those capabilities within wider systems of knowledge, talent, investment and opportunity to create a shared direction and generate value that would not be possible in isolation.