Small and medium sized businesses are to play a key role in the government’s aim to make the UK the best place in the world to run an innovative business or public service, concluded a whitepaper published yesterday.
The power of government spending must be harnessed to create demand for new innovative products and services, concluded the paper Innovation Nation.
The announcement came only a day after Alistair Darling’s Budget in which he set out goals for small and medium sized companies to win 30% of all public sector business in the next five years.
Key points of Innovation Nation include the necessity to increase the number of employers investing in training, improving the UK’s skills base and consequently becoming more productive.
Immediate steps include a commitment for each government department to publish an Innovation Procurement Plan as part of its commercial strategy. This will set out how departments will embed innovation at the heart of procurement processes, encouraging them to engage with businesses at an early stage.
Launching the whitepaper, John Denham, secretary for state for innovation, universities and skills, said: “Innovation will be the key to some of the biggest challenges facing our society, like global warming and sustainable development.”
“We need to ensure that Britain contributes to the innovative solutions and that British business and the British people benefit from the new opportunities and prosperity they create,” he commented.
© Crimson Business Ltd. 2008
