2013 news cbrenhancingimpact

Enhancing impact: the value of public sector R&D

30 August 2012

The article at a glance

The Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) and the UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~IRC) Enhancing Value Taskforce has published the second …

Enhancing impact: the value of public sector R&DThe Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) and the UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~IRC) Enhancing Value Taskforce has published the second major report in the series arising from their research.

The new report by Alan Hughes and Ben Martin, Enhancing Impact: The Value of Public Sector R&D, surveys a wide range of macro- and micro-economic literature on the way in which publicly financed R&D in the university sector is associated with socio-economic impacts.

It provides a critique of studies focusing on rate of return calculations and argues for an approach using richer narrative based approaches emphasising intermediate outcomes. The report emphasises the extent to which socio-economic outcomes emerge only with long time lags and are frequently heavily skewed so that a handful of the most successful impacts arise from a small proportion of total funded research and are heavily dependent on complementary investments outside the university system.

Find out more

Download the report Enhancing Impact: The Value of Public Sector R&D
Visit the Centre for Business Research (CBR) website