About the UK~IRC

About the UK~IRC

The UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~ IRC) is a joint venture between the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College Business School to further research and knowledge exchange on innovation policy and practive. The UK~IRC involves a large-scale, multi-year research programme and a Knowledge Hub to engage policy-makers and practitioners about innovation research. The research programme explores open innovation, service innovation, online communities and innovation policy-making. Through the Hub, our aim is to maximise the effect of the research on policy and practice, so as to help the UK face its social, environmental and economic challenges.

The Centre is co-funded by Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB). This support is gratefully acknowledged.

Our Mission

Our Mission is to advance knowledge on innovation through high quality, independent research that engages directly with policy and practioner communities. Maximum impact on policy and practice will be achieved through knowledge out-reach to all potential sources and audiences, and through developed capacity (in terms of people, data and methods), for future research and knowledge exchange.

We:

• Ensure that new research on innovation in both the public and private sectors has the greatest effect on policy and practice. 
• Explore the relationship between innovation and business performance and how this affects the national economy and the individual organisation.
• Actively disseminating its work through a ‘Knowledge Exchange Hub’, this will include activities ranging from seminars to innovation podcasts.