Project overview

Inclusive innovation.

Improving outcomes for innovation-led growth.

Capabilities demonstrated: Policy analysis, evaluation, and formation.

Client: Insights North East and Newcastle University

Date: November 2022

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The job to be done

To define inclusive innovation in a way that makes sense to policymakers, by developing a framework that helps to inform and assess inclusive innovation policy in practice and to test the framework to develop insights that can be implemented locally.

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The key challenges

Inclusive innovation is considered a ‘fuzzy’ term with no common definition and characterised by a set of overlapping concepts such as innovation and inclusive growth. Much has been written about inclusive innovation from an academic perspective, but little has been done to convert policy concepts into a practical framework to assess or develop practical approaches that can be implemented within an innovation district.

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The approach taken

Working with Third Life Economics, we developed:

• A working definition of inclusive innovation from an extensive review of contemporary literature. This informed the development of two tools.

• Tool 1. A high-level strategic framework with five lines of inquiry to use in discussion with interviewees, to understand the districts' purpose, goals, focus and scale, impact and links to broader civic and social responsibilities.

• Tool 2. A rapid appraisal framework and scoring system for innovation districts to use to assess their progress or readiness in terms of the design, delivery, and diffusion of inclusive innovation policy in practice.

• We tested both tools in the Helix Innovation District in Newcastle (UK) through 20 stakeholder interviews to obtain qualitative and quantitative evidence of inclusive innovation being applied in practice.

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Outcome and impact

From our assessment of the innovation district we have been able to:

• Refined the framework and assessment process for use in the North-East and potentially in an international study of innovation districts, by Newcastle University.

• Disseminated (via 3LE), the results of the work through INE networks to inform similar policy initiatives.

• Developed detailed recommendations that may inform future strategy, performance planning, governance and engagement and improve approaches to inclusive innovation in Helix.

• Inform the development of Insight North East policy priorities and workstreams in 2023/24.

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