Operation Innovation: How to make society richer, healthier and happier

The effect of accumulated innovations has transformed the world at a pace that would have been unimaginable to our not-so-distant ancestors. Thanks to the contributions of just a few thousand innovators, society is now far richer, and better equipped to tackle pressing problems – from climate change or pandemics.

This new essay collection outlines some of the fundamental building blocks to achieving an innovative economy – including how to effectively fund research, how to properly regulate emerging industries, how to make it easier to start and scale businesses, and how to raise the status of innovating.

Access All Areas: Government

Government bodies account for over a tenth of all spending in the economy. Their procurement budgets therefore represent lucrative opportunities for businesses large and small alike. Despite the enthusiasm towards them, the government often struggles to adequately support smaller businesses throughout the procurement process – with only 10% of total government spending ultimately going to SMEs. 

In Access All Areas: Government, published with Enterprise Nation, Aria Babu and Emma Jones look at the barriers SMEs face when trying to sell to the government, and how they might be tackled. Recommendations they make include writing tenders in a way which allows for more innovation from suppliers, working to connect SMEs with previously successful bidders, and better signposting of upcoming procurement to increase certainty over the pipeline of opportunities an SME could bid for.

Procurement and Innovation

For years, the government has stressed its commitment to helping SMEs succeed. One of the ways in which it does this most obviously is through the money it directly spends on them when procuring goods and services. However, as Chris Haley, Sam Dumitriu, and Aria Babu explain in a new report, under the status quo, the government makes it hard for SMEs and startups to compete with large incumbents, even when they have a better product. 

In Procurement and Innovation, the authors outline what challenges SMEs currently face when bidding for government contracts, before making a series of recommendations on how to mitigate such issues.