We developed an innovation dashboard (pdf, 882kb) to measure innovation performance. It helps us:
- Compare performance of the West Midlands to other English regions, and the English average.
- Grade the West Midlands' position to provide an at-a-glance summary of our performance.
- Indicate English regions with the best performance to help the West Midlands learn from the best.
Innovation indicators
The dashboard covers several primary and secondary indicators split into:
- Inputs: actions contributing to innovative practices and creating a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.
- Links: bringing people and businesses together to innovate.
- Outputs: measuring how successful innovative practices have been.
The summary paper Innovation dashboard – measuring regional innovation (pdf, 1.12mb) outlines how we developed the dashboard, its coverage, and the framework on which it's based. In the paper, we also give a commentary on the West Midlands' performance under the indicators.
Among the nine English regions, the West Midlands ranks:
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Seventh for the proportion of firms making innovation related expenditure.
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Fifth for the density of knowledge intensive business.
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Fourth for businesses with co-operation agreements.
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Third for the proportion of businesses introducing novel products.
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First for the proportion of businesses introducing existing processes.
Although the West Midlands isn't top ranking under the dashboard indicators, it's often close to, or above, the national average.
We plan to update the dashboard approximately every six months, based upon the release of key datasets. The last update was in March 2010.