Well, what are the key Snark hunting lessons? There continue to be some powerful market failure arguments for government support of SMEs, and in relation to innovation they will remain powerful arguments. But we have to be very careful about designing and evaluating programmes to find out which schemes work the best. We need to monitor and measure our programmes and avoid spreading resources too thinly. And then in thinking about innovation as a system, which I have called the Boojum factor, I think that there is a move away from firm specific to system specific approaches. I know many here in Australia also feel that this is an important change in innovation policy. It reflects the increasingly distributed and open nature of innovation and the centrality of collaboration and sectoral systems of innovation. I think we need to get a better grasp on the specific appropriation opportunities for different groupings of firms within sectors and product groups. There is no point in having a small firm policy which promotes the formation of new businesses if it is known that within three or four years they will be dependent on a key customer or a key supplier, or where access to a market depends on a specific asset they do not have, and the firm faces an unstable future. The overall lesson is that we need to place more weight on the innovation system as a whole, and to differentiate the support according to the given industrial circumstances.

References

Cosh AD and Hughes A (Eds) (2007) British Enterprise: thriving or surviving? CBR Cambridge.

Cosh AD, Hughes A and Lester RK (2006) UK Plc. Just how innovative are we? Cambridge MIT Institute.

Cox M, Hughes A, Boyns N and Spires R (2001) Evaluation of SMART, DTI Evaluation Report Series No 3.

DTI (2006) Innovation in the UK: Indicators and Insights, DTI Occasional Paper No 6 July.

Hughes A (2007) 'Innovation Policy as cargo cult: Myth and Reality in knowledge-led Productivity Growth' CBR Working Paper June 2007: WP348

Hughes A (2007) 'University Industry Linkages and UK Science and Innovation Policy' in Yusuf F and Nabeshima K (Eds) How Universities promote Economic Growth, World Bank.

ONS (2007) Research and Development in UK Businesses 2005, Business Monitor MA14.

ALAN HUGHES

Professor, Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK

(1) See endnote for key reference material informing this paper.

(2) Railway flotation and regulation were important contemporary issues.

(3) Hughes A (2006) 'Optimal Innovation Systems: Lessons from the UK and The USA', in Cutler T and Dodgson M (Eds) 'Summary of Proceedings from the Innovation Leadership Forum', Innovation: Management, policy and practice, 8(3-4): 359-411.

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