Innovation Alliance for the West Midlands
About this good practice
Two core aims: (1) Build and maintain a thriving innovation ecosystem & (2) Stimulate and catalyse a pipeline of innovation activity
The Smart City Alliance (SCA) is a cross-sector network whose membership includes practitioners from universities, local authorities, businesses, voluntary organisations and SMEs, seeking to share and shape how they make the best use of technologies for the future of towns, cities, and rural communities. It is convened by the Innovation Alliance for the West Midlands (IAWM), a part of the West Midlands Innovation Programme (WMIP). The group meets bi-monthly and provides visiting speakers a platform to share their smart initiatives and the opportunity to forge relationships with Alliance partners. Thematic workshops also look to drive collaborative activity in response to current opportunities. Engagement in the SCA is voluntary and constitutes an informal agreement both to share best practices and challenges with others and to collaborate on innovation projects.
Resources needed
Resourcing partners are Black Country LEP, Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP, Innovation Birmingham Ltd, Sustainability West Midlands, West Midlands Academic Health Sciences Network and West Midlands Combined Authority, and the Private sector Chairs of the working groups and other activities.
Evidence of success
2020: 22 Events with a total of 637 attendees; 14 Working Group meetings; 5 Innovation Policy and Practice events; A new network, the Innovation Support Forum, focusing on support providers with 3 meetings in 2020; X Venturefest WM online because of COVID-19 (with 355 attendees); 50% increase in peak engagement on Twitter; 77% increase in mail-out readership; 67% increase in peak monthly web views
Potential for learning or transfer
IAWM launched the West Midlands Innovation Programme (WMIP) in 2019 to deliver the innovation framework that sits within the West Midlands Local Industrial Strategy. With a focus on demand-led (or market-pull) business innovation, WMIP has been driving up levels of innovation across all areas of the region by delivering a stronger, more integrated innovation support offer to businesses and providing targeted support to access more national innovation funding.
- Free and open to businesses, universities, local authorities, voluntary organisations
- Meetings 4-6 times per year plus regular e-mail updates to connect and inform
- Private-sector Chair, supported by members of the IAWM or Virtual Innovation Team
- Led by members (flexibility in operation and consistently high satisfaction)
- Focus on sharing ideas, best practices, challenges and building collaborative innovation
- NOT governance bodies, but aggregated voices may be used to inform strategy and shape challenges
Further information
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Good practice owner
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