We carry out research on economic themes of enterprise and innovation in the West Midlands.
Understanding the way that these key processes work in driving economic change is challenging. This task involves close collaboration with policy makers, academics, public and third sectors, as well as businesses.
Our work aims to assess the scale of the challenge facing the West Midlands and inform policy makers where they can best target their efforts. Our work is steered by the Innovation and Technology Council and the Enterprise Board.
Recent and ongoing projects include:
Published 11th December 2009
We developed an innovation dashboard (pdf, 882kb) to measure the region's innovation performance. The dashboard covers a range of measures of innovation performance, including inputs to, links through, and outputs from various innovation processes.
More about this project »
Published 11th December 2009
We've completed the report of first steps in measuring regional innovation (pdf, 1.72mb), which proposes an approach to the on-going monitoring of innovation activity in the West Midlands. It includes an analysis of the scale and performance of the industrial sectors which correspond to the West Midlands clusters and themes of the West Midlands Innovation Technology Council.
More about this project »
Published 11th December 2009
Our report Benchmarking start-up business activity (pdf, 3.43mb) analyses business start-up activity in the West Midlands, using a wide range of data sources.
More about this project »
Updated 7th August 2009
We've published the first report from our ongoing state of the region dialogue on innovation in the West Midlands. The importance of innovation in a changing economy (pdf, 580kb) includes four independent essays on key themes for regional innovation policy.
More about this project »
Published 30th April 2009
This paper provides a detailed analysis of the extent to which the region’s industrial structure influences the performance gap between the West Midlands economy and the national economy.
Download the paper » (pdf, 824kb)