Taking services seriously
Published
May 2008
Download
Taking services seriously report (PDF, 2MB)
Innovation in services policy briefing (PDF, 77KB)
Description
Services are insubstantial and fleeting, dependent on a credit-fuelled ‘binge economy’. At a time of financial uncertainty, we need to return to the solid foundations provided by a manufacturing-based economy.
At least, this is what some commentators would have you believe. Yet where innovation policy is concerned, despite recent movements in the right direction, we haven’t fully departed from these foundations. Services have not yet been properly incorporated into our mechanisms for stimulating and supporting innovation. Even our current methods of measuring innovation often under-represent innovation in services. This is one aspect of what we call ‘hidden innovation’.
This is beginning to change: policymakers are recognising that services should be more central to innovation policy. There is a growing awareness that innovation in services often differs fundamentally from innovation in advanced manufacturing, but no agreement about which forms of innovation matter most in services or how policy should support them. Of course, the truth is that we need both innovative services and manufacturing. Rather than being mutually exclusive, both represent the kind of high-value, dynamic, creative economy that the UK needs.
This report examines how we can help our services firms to become more innovative and more productive. We think that it provides significant new evidence for policymakers and should prompt a new phase in the discussion on innovation in services.