Innovation in the London Region, 1999-2000

<P>Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.</P><br>The theoretical aim of this research is to examine and understand why innovative and competitive firms tend to cluster in a limited number of particular cities. The project is also seeking to understand the observed variety of supplier and customer arrangements among firms and the interactions between these and the firms' home city regions.<br>
These concerns raise questions about the characteristics of different stages of the innovation process and why firms' activities have been seen to vary from flexibly specialised local production networks, in mainly craft-based older industries, in new industrial districts; to individually produced innovations linked primarily in the context of competitive secrecy to major international customers.<br>
Research on the London region was informed by the comparative perspective of innovation studies in the four European cities of Amsterdam, Milan, Paris and Stuttgart (see the companion study to this one, SN:4361 'Innovation in Amsterdam, London, Milan, Paris and Stuttgart, 1999-2000'). A common questionnaire was administered in the five cities to a common sample frame of innovative companies who had won awards for basic research in industrial technologies for Europe (BRITE). In addition to this common sample frame, innovative firms drawn from local databases were also interviewed. The lessons from the first stage of the research were taken forward into a more in-depth research study of innovative and external support systems in the London metropolitan region where the sampling frame was identified using a variety of innovation awards. The purpose of this follow-up stage was to gather more specific data on aspects which were shown to be relatively important in London.<br><B>Main Topics</B>:<BR><br>Topics covered include the role of location factors, external support systems and internal organisation in the development of innovative products. The data were collected from 132 telephone interviews with industrial firms, where they were asked about specific innovative projects and to consider innovation as a development process, characterise its attributes and then estimate the importance of different factors and relationships during its development. <br>
The innovations were identified from lists of Smart/Spur Award-winning innovative projects and Millennium Award-winning projects. Smart/Spur is a government award to fund pre-competitive innovative research projects in manufacturing technologies. The questions focused on the product outcomes of these projects. The Millennium Award was awarded by the Design Council for innovative excellence in design and manufacturing.<br>