Innovation Plan
The Lancashire Innovation Plan
Innovate Lancashire is the delivery partner for the Lancashire Innovation Plan (LIP).
Developed by Lancashire County Council in partnership with the Lancashire Innovation Board – a cohort of senior business leaders, innovation experts and academics drawn from across Lancashire – the LIP is an ambitious five-year economic development and inward investment strategy for the whole of the county.
In addition to driving economic growth and unlocking investment, the LIP is further underpinned by a commitment to delivering positive social change: creating new opportunities and improved outcomes for all of Lancashire’s citizens.
Below you can find more details about the plan, its objectives, and how it is being implemented. To download the full plan, click here.
What is innovation?
The definition of innovation which informs our approach is:
The process of bringing about new ideas, methods, products, services, or solutions that have a significant positive impact and value. It involves transforming creative concepts into tangible outcomes that improve efficiency, and effectiveness, or address unmet needs.
The Lancashire Innovation Plan: A Blueprint for Growth
As the cradle of the industrial revolution, Lancashire has a long tradition of embracing innovative thinking which has gone on to change the world. Today, 250 years since Richard Arkwright’s disruptive cotton spinning technology helped to reshape the global economy, our county is again on the cusp of another transformative chapter in its rich industrial history.
Through the combination of our unrivalled strengths in sectors like advanced engineering and manufacturing, clean growth and energy, aerospace and future flight, and defence and security; Lancashire’s agile and responsive supply chains; our entrepreneurial and business-focused universities; and our highly skilled workforce and strong talent pipelines; Lancashire is fantastically placed to nurture and accelerate an innovation-based economy which is truly world-leading.
But to maximise our full potential, the county has recognised it needs a cohesive and pragmatic roadmap which connects our innovation assets, consolidates our significant commercial and academic R&D strengths, and engages with businesses of all sizes and types.
To stay competitive, both domestically and globally, we also need to take a more joined-up and collaborative approach to innovation funding, lobbying, networking, and external communications.
As a result, the county has developed the Lancashire Innovation Plan (LIP) – an actionable growth strategy, with clear and measurable objectives.
The 4 Pillars: Lancashire Innovation Plan
The LIP’s objectives are being delivered via four core pillars: Grow, Expand, Connect and Tell. While each pillar has been developed to drive the county’s innovation economy in a very targeted and specific way, they all work together to support the LIP’s overarching vision and mission.
The Grow pillar focuses on:
- Maintaining and strengthening Lancashire’s world-class sector capabilities in sectors such as aerospace, advanced manufacturing, energy and chemicals
- Exploiting new growth areas such as cyber, the digital industries, health, and low carbon
- Ensuring Lancashire’s innovation-led sectors maximise both national and global market opportunities
To deliver the Grow objectives, The Lancashire Innovation Plan contains five specific actions:
- Enable effective clustering activity in support of the National Cyber Force (NCF) and the wider North West Cyber Corridor
- Boost spin-offs from the county’s universities, and secure spin-ins from outside Lancashire
- Increase the supply of flexible and digitally-enabled office and lab space
- Define and develop a detailed Smart Specialisation strategy
- Secure more dedicated funding to support and strengthen Lancashire’s innovation ambitions
The Expand pillar focuses on:
- Ensuring Lancashire fully maximises the benefits of its key R&D assets
- Increasing local businesses commitment to pursuing innovation-led growth
- Converting that commitment to economic activity, helping to close the county’s R&D investment gap
To deliver the Expand objectives, the LIP contains two specific actions:
- Utilise innovation assets such as AMRC North West, Engineering Innovation Centre (EIC), and the Health Innovation Campus (HIC), to build innovation capacity and increase innovation capabilities within Lancashire businesses
- Develop and deliver specific programmes of practical and effective innovation support for Lancashire’s SMEs
The Connect pillar focuses on the following:
- Establishing and growing stronger strategic partnerships with both neighbouring north west regions and across the wider north
- Ensuring people working within Lancashire’s innovation ecosystem – including individuals in universities, businesses, local authorities and public agencies – develop a wider network of contacts regionally and nationally
To deliver the Connect objectives, the LIP contains three specific actions:
- Enabling Lancashire to increase levels of participation in innovation networking activities in Greater Manchester, the Liverpool City Region, and beyond
- The establishment and development of new cluster organisations aligned to Lancashire’s Smart Specialisations (where they don’t already exist)
- Creation of a dynamic pitch events programme for Lancashire start-ups
The Tell pillar focuses on:
- Increasing external awareness of Lancashire’s innovation-led investment potential, high value career pathways, and its outstanding quality of life offer
- Ensuring Lancashire is plugged-in to the national innovation agenda at the highest possible levels of policymaking and decision making
- Increasing awareness of Lancashire’s innovation-led capabilities, and significant commercial opportunities, within the county itself
To deliver the Tell objectives, the LIP contains two specific actions:
- Develop and resource a new innovation-focused marketing and communications strategy for Lancashire
- Develop and resource an Innovation Observatory to help monitor, anticipate and evidence Lancashire’s innovation-led economic growth potential
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