Innovation is recognised as a primary means to maximise our place competitiveness within a global context, and drive the Liverpool City Region’s transformational future economic growth. The associated vision is set out in a dedicated Innovation Plan (November 2014), which seeks to harness and exploit the LCR’s exceptional array of distinctive science and innovation assets, ranging from Unilever’s global R&D HQ and the Virtual Engineering Centre, to the planet’s biggest offshore wind farm and EU’s largest supply of chlor-alkali hydrogen, to the STFC Hartree Centre supercomputer and IBM Watson platform, to the internationally renowned school of Tropical Medicine and new Alder Hey with its vision to be the world’s first “living hospital”. There is a particular concentration of opportunities in/around the Liverpool Knowledge Quarter and SciTech Daresbury Enterprise Zone, and according to 4 broad “smart specialisation” sectors: Advanced Manufacturing & Big Science Blue/Green Digital & Creative Health & Life Sciences The partnership-based Plan is important in terms of both strategic advocacy and as a commissioning framework for EU and other funding and investment, and sets out a programme of interlinking collaborative projects capable of creating scale and impact, updated in March 2016 in line with a process to review and inventorise the LCR Innovation Ecosystem’s demonstrably unique and/or nationally or internationally significant assets and capabilities. Driving delivery and providing strategic leadership is a high level Innovation Board, involving leading industry representatives, Innovate UK, STFC, both Liverpool and John Moores universities, Liverpool CCG, Liverpool Health Partners, and the Combined Authority, facilitated by the LCR LEP, but chaired by Unilever’s Vice President of Open Innovation, reflecting the Board’s primary focus on commercialisation.
