We've developed an innovation dashboard (pdf, 882kb) to measure the region's innovation performance.
The dashboard enables us to:
- Compare performance of the West Midlands to other English regions' performance, as well as the English average
- Grade the region's position to provide an at-a-glance summary of the region's performance
- Indicate the English regions with the best performance allowing the West Midlands to learn from the best.
Innovation indicators
The dashboard covers a number of primary and secondary indicators, which are split into:
- Inputs: actions which contribute to innovative practices and create a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship
- Links: bringing people and businesses together to innovate
- Outputs: measuring how successful innovative practices have been.
The paper Innovation dashboard – measuring regional innovation (pdf, 1.12mb) outlines how the dashboard was developed, its coverage, and the framework on which it is based. The paper also gives a commentary on the region's performance under the indicators.
Amongst 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 on novel products
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First for the proportion of businesses introducing existing processes
Although the West Midlands is not always a top ranking region under the dashboard indicators, it is 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.