Manchester Innovation Investment Fund

Evaluation

Salford Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures with Manchester Institute of Innovation Research & Regeneris

These cover summative and formative evaluation of the Manchester Innovation Investment Fund. SURF are looking at the impact of the Fund on the innovation eco-system whilst Regeneris are looking at the individual projects within the Fund.

Projects

Animating the Corridor’s Innovation System (The Corridor)

The Manchester Independent Economic Review (MIER) report on Innovation, Trade and Connectivity identified the advantages of supply chain networks rather than sector focussed communities in spreading innovation. Its findings also echoed the need for more links between firms in the Manchester City Region.

Building on this and several reports, whose recommendations centre around improving the environment for innovation on The Corridor (in particular encouraging more cross-sector interaction), this feasibility study aims to establish the baseline to be used to evaluate Corridor interventions, provide case studies and exemplars of innovative action, identify participants for events, and promote cross–sector innovative networking.

Ultimately, it is hoped that this will lead to the establishment of an ‘Innovation Community’ with two key elements: a web-based portal and a series of face-to-face events, reinforcing the importance of people–based networking through a variety of mechanisms.

The initial focus will be on the Corridor, which contains all the Manchester Science Park–based businesses as well as two major academic institutions, health trust, and other leading intermediaries.

Carbon Coop Feasibility Study (Urbanism Environment Design, Ltd)

The Carbon Co-op aims to create a membership-based bulk buying business that delivers a range of benefits whilst achieving large scale reductions in household carbon emissions. The co-op will facilitate the installation of a range of low carbon measures in its members’ homes – from cheap energy information displays which save 5-15% in carbon emissions, to improvements to the fabric of peoples homes and solar roof systems that can cut household carbon emissions by over 60%.

The Co-op will act as a bulk-buying consumer enterprise, bringing together hundreds of home owners as well as housing associations and social housing managers. Local economies of scale for installations and access to low cost finance through partners such as the Co-operative Bank will enable the Carbon Co-op to act as a broker with trusted suppliers and local installers to purchase and install energy saving products and renewable technologies at discount prices of 25-50%.

Creative Credits (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)

This pilot scheme aims to demonstrate how the innovation capacity of SMEs in businesses outside the creative industries may be improved by stimulating B2B knowledge transfer from the creative industries. It will independently assess the sustainability of the business benefits. The pilot will investigate how supply chain relationships with creative businesses impact business innovation.

The pilot will contribute to existing knowledge on innovation voucher pilots that focus on HEI knowledge transfer. It will investigate ways of stimulating innovation and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses compared to HEI-oriented schemes.

Creative Open Access (Cornerhouse)

This project argues that there exists an increasing gap between what young people are taught in schools in terms of technology and what they can do outside of the school environment. It argues that young people are more advanced than the school syllabus and are often ‘turned-off’ to technology and digital careers by the approach taken in schools. However, employers in the digital sectors are looking for people who have a mix of technical and creative skills, which is not provided by the current education system.

This feasibility study aims to provide taster sessions for young people, form partnerships with companies, and investigate large scale projects with a view to developing a long term strategy for Creative Open Access. The aim is to enable young people to bridge the gap between their technical skills and creativity (currently not being experienced in the school environment) with a view to sparking an interest in careers in the digital sector and to provide opportunities for young people to showcase their abilities.

Cultural and Creative Innovators (Manchester International Festival)

The proposed Manchester Trust is a new initiative which will capitalise on the innovation, ambition and international reach of the Festival. It will provide a model for embedding these principles in communities, creative industries and educational institutions across the Manchester region. Its key aim is to build creative thinking, skills, confidence and capacity across Manchester.

Building on the Festival’s innovative artistic programme, the Manchester Trust will, through 4 key strands, support talent, innovation and creativity across the city. Collectively, these strands will engage diverse local communities, especially young Mancunians, emerging creative entrepreneurs, and both new and established arts organisations in skills development, international networking and in the creation of inspirational new cultural experiences for the people of Manchester.

Digital Planning (Manchester SmartCity) (University of Manchester Business School)

The city faces many transport challenges with high levels of car congestion and carbon emissions, with limited infrastructure, parking spaces etc., while the adoption of sustainable car transport solutions such as ride-sharing has been very low to date – less than 1% of employee journeys are shared according to data.

With increasing emphasis on becoming a greener city, and with many of organisations across the city aiming to achieve environmental targets and demonstrate compliance, the goal of the ‘Smart City’ (working title) project is to change the ways in which people use cars and develop sustainable mobility solutions that are simple, fast and easy, and that meet the multiple needs of a metropolitan population and organisations. The project will involve two world-class private sector partners who will develop the innovative technology and mobility solutions required, providing a vehicle to a long-term commercial/public service depending on the outcome of the trial.

FabLabs Feasibility (The Manufacturing Institute)

There are 35 Fab Labs around the world now but none in the UK. This project seeks to establish a model for how advanced manufacturing may function in the future by engaging communities of deprivation or need with the opportunity to innovate by making their own products through the use of additive manufacturing technologies.

The project aims to address the harnessing of talent in communities of deprivation or need in pursuit of innovation and enterprise, ways of driving an innovative model for the future of advanced manufacturing for the benefit of our economy and means of creating a successful model to link businesses to talent in our communities and create new opportunities for the individuals in those communities, as well as looking at how to bring global best practice in university dissemination processes into our communities.

The Manufacturing Institute has established links through industrial members of its Board of Trustees with Professor Neil Gershenfeld at MIT, and the feasibility study ultimately aims to identify a suitable location in Manchester, a community champion and suitable management processes to ensure that the model is adapted successfully to local circumstances and culture and maximise its chances of success.

FabLabs Phase 2 (The Manufacturing Institute)

Following on from the initial feasibility study, this project is aiming to establish the UK’s first FabLab in Manchester.

Future Innovators (iDiscover) (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)

Working with five schools in the Manchester region, this project aims to increase the innovative capacity of the Manchester young people involved in the project by generating informed demand for learning experiences that support the development of the characteristics needed by innovators and by providing access to rich learning experiences.

The applicant hopes to discover the effect the project has on young people and their parents / carers, and create a replicable model that can be extended and sustained after the life-time of the project.

Innovation Boardroom (Manchester: Knowledge Capital)

The Innovation Boardroom work aims to build on the previous Innovation Manchester work, to create a venture that will enhance the city region’s innovation systems through improved levels of connectivity and collaboration, nurtured within an environment that is specifically focused on innovation and action amongst diverse stakeholders.

The Innovation Boardroom is looking to turn a collection of promising ideas into a series of project proposals to be taken forward to the Manchester Innovation Investment Fund and/or other appropriate funding sources, with Project Champions and key partners driving them forward.

The Innovation Boardroom has been designed to support Building Block 6 of the Manchester Multi-Area Agreement – ‘Enhancing Investment, Knowledge and Innovation’, and also forms a central plank of the GM Innovation Prospectus which in turn will help to inform the GM Strategy.

Innovation Teams (New Economy Strategies)
This project created, launched and managed several ‘Hot Teams’, focussing on various sectors such as the digital and creative industries, providing levels of staffing, research, support and business plan development. New Economies Strategy also linked and leveraged the distinct attributes to develop cross cutting, individualised business plans.

Manchester Masters (Manchester Metropolitan University and Partners)

The ethos at the heart of this project is that great ideas do not come from corporations or government departments. Great ideas come from great people.

Talent has been a recurring theme in discussion surrounding ways to make a significant difference to Manchester. The aim of Manchester Masters aims to provide a Manchester offer to tempt more top class talent to study and then stay in Manchester.

Initially based on graduate development programmes, which each year give individuals the opportunity to work in a variety of departments within the organisation in order to develop and then apply this knowledge to the business that provided the opportunity, Manchester Masters will offer 10 graduates (recruited via a nomination and intensive selection process) from across universities within Manchester city region, the opportunity to sample four very different organisations (one placement per quarter for a year), and be paid a salary while doing so. The pilot programme will offer marketing placements (PR, advertising, media, digital, design etc) with a view to perhaps expanding into other areas in the future.

Included in the project is also a business mentor per student, who will coach them to ensure they can add value to any organisation they go on to join; a ‘live free’ programme – the opportunity to live rent-free in a city centre apartment and travel for free on the city’s public transport via a System One Travelcard; and the students will finish the year actually having a Masters degree from participating in the project.

Manchester Independent Economic Review (MIER)

The Fund provided a significant amount of the resource to deliver the MIER, which consisted of a Commission of prominent economists and business leaders, supported by a Policy Advisory Group and Secretariat, with responsibility for commissioning high quality evidence-based research to inform decision-makers in Manchester.

The Review provided a fresh economic narrative, with a view to both informing and raising the level of debate regarding the economic future of the Manchester City Region within the economic development community.

The MIER provided a shared, accessible and updateable evidence base (at a more detailed level than previously achieved) which can be used to support policy makers and underpin policy choices regarding future priorities for strategic investment and to bridge some of the persistent gulfs in understanding what exists in the Manchester City Region, about how regional economies grow.

It is also envisaged that the results of the MIER will provide a shared view of the future development of the City Region’s economy including the longer-term drivers of change and factors facilitating responses to future external changes and shocks.

Manchester: Integrating Medicine and Innovative Technology

This is a large, multi-partner and high profile project that aims to provide significant advantage to Manchester’s medical and health technology companies. The model being used has the potential to transform the way in which the medical technology industry interacts with clinicians, enhancing both the quality and pace of innovation, also aiming to enable the transfer of the globally-recognised CIMIT® (Centre for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology) model from Boston to Manchester. The model brings together engineers, designers and clinicians in a novel approach to identifying and developing new products that have clearly-defined clinical need and market potential.

In keeping with the ‘pilot testing’ ethos of the Innovation Fund, the Manchester centre will be used as a learning opportunity for Boston to investigate how the model can be rolled out across Europe and the rest of the world.

Open Data Cities (Future Everything)

This project aims to achieve significant step-change in the capacity for innovation in the Greater Manchester City Region by creating an openData Innovation (ODI) ecology. By working with data holding public organisations, the project aims to help identify and publish datasets allowing local companies to develop novel and innovative uses that will have value both socially and economically. The project is responding to a demand in Greater Manchester for standardisation of public data sources across the ten authorities.

The project aims to begin by identifying locally held datasets that could be standardised and made available to the developer community, working with data holders to enable them to make the data they hold available.

Sector Progression Productivity Pilot (The Environment Commission)
This project seeks to tackle a problem identified not only as one of Greater Manchester’s but also the UK’s greatest innovation challenges of the 21st Century. If successful, it will help position Greater Manchester as the partner of choice and hub of excellence for developing the skills, techniques, technologies and resources needed to transform the existing building stock of Greater Manchester and the UK into efficient, low carbon homes and commercial buildings.

At the end of this project Greater Manchester will be a stronger position to improve its capacity for innovation in an increasingly vital sector, through potential benefits in skills, productivity, and new financial models to support changing needs.

Smart City Futures (New Economy/CONTACT Universities Partnership)

Taking on board the impact of the current global economic crisis, this international conference will set out global competitiveness strategies, bringing together a unique panel of internationally recognised speakers to show how city and regional economies in developed countries can respond effectively: economic success (before, during and after the credit crunch) demands innovation, collaboration and new strategies for cities and regions.

Smart Energy Network (Cooler Projects CIC)

There are currently plans to roll out a discounted smart metering scheme for non-domestic electricity users in the city region, with a pilot project in Manchester. However, particularly in current trading conditions, it’s foreseen that very few users will invest extra in reducing their carbon footprint unless they feel others “like them” have done it already and benefited. (ref post Mini-Stern Report by 100 Months Club for Manchester Enterprises). Further, users will only engage in a network if it is ‘smart’ – tailored for maximum utility from the briefest time used.

This project will complement and enhance the existing plans, including a ‘user-directed’ self help and innovation network while aiming to maximise the decrease in carbon footprint from the adopters of smart meters in the Manchester city region; maximise the cost savings to smart metering adopters; maximise additional carbon savings for smart metering adopters beyond the first step of simply reducing their utility bills (e.g. behavioural change); and connect smart metering adopters in similar sectors and fields of activity together, maximising the effect of peer to peer recommendation, resulting in building a vibrant greener business brand for Manchester, with subsequent benefit to inward investment and attraction of talent.

Technology Working for You Feasibility (Melandra Innovation Consultants)

The idea behind this study is that if local businesses can be shown the benefits of technology as they apply to their business then the uptake of technology within the SME market could increase, which in turn would drive the demand for future innovation. This study aims to test the feasibility of this through enabling businesses to talk to other businesses in the form of conversations, workshops and presentations.

Technology Working for You Phase 2 (Melandra Innovation Consultants)

Following the feasibility study, Technology Working For You aims to achieve a step change in the innovative capacity of Mancunian companies by combining technology, innovation and practical thinking skills.
The project will bring together expert facilitators and digital companies to deliver insights and practices from successful organisations to businesses that will benefit from innovation.

Each company will attend the core 1-day ‘Innovate With Confidence’ workshop, choose two 1-day Technology Working For You workshops then participate in the 1-day Business Breakthrough workshop. There will be a mentoring programme for the companies following the workshops.

WITS: Workforce & Innovation Technical Solution (New Economy Strategies)

This project picked up on some of the activity from New Economy Strategies and aims to build a tool capable of innovative, sophisticated mapping ability of data and assets provide a database analysis tool covering social demographics and businesses.

Currently sitting outside of the main fund (contracted with NESTA)

Futurology (Manchester Digital Events)
InnovArts (Urbis)