Innovation is all about the future, but how will it influence and support future societies and economies as we work towards a fairer and more inclusive United Kingdom? Join Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult as he speaks with Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, about his mission to inspire, involve and invest – building skills and driving diversity to help create real progress out of great ideas and using innovation to build a brighter future for everyone – both here in the UK and across the globe.
Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, which forms part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Indro is a highly experienced technology CEO and business leader with a track record of leading innovation and technology commercialisation in businesses of all sizes across the world – from publicly listed and multinational corporations to new venture and private equity-backed technology companies. He has extensive experience of leading fast growth; start-up; spinouts; restructuring; turnaround and successful mergers and acquisitions, spending much of this time in Asia and the US. With a strong personal interest in the development of skills for industry, he co-founded the UK Electronics Skills Foundation and served on the SEMTA (now Enginuity) board for nine years, where he was Chairman of the committee managing their investment fund. He is a passionate advocate for diversity, equality, and inclusion. Indro has a degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University and graduated from the Wharton Advanced Management Program. He speaks several languages.
Chapters
Innovation is all about the future, but how will it influence and support future societies and economies as we work towards a fairer and more inclusive United Kingdom? Join Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult as he speaks with Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, about his mission to inspire, involve and invest – building skills and driving diversity to help create real progress out of great ideas and using innovation to build a brighter future for everyone – both here in the UK and across the globe. Indro is a highly experienced technology CEO and business leader with a track record of leading innovation and technology commercialisation in businesses of all sizes across the world.
Show Notes
Innovation is all about the future, but how will it influence and support future societies and economies as we work towards a fairer and more inclusive United Kingdom? Join Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult as he speaks with Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, about his mission to inspire, involve and invest – building skills and driving diversity to help create real progress out of great ideas and using innovation to build a brighter future for everyone – both here in the UK and across the globe.
Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, which forms part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Indro is a highly experienced technology CEO and business leader with a track record of leading innovation and technology commercialisation in businesses of all sizes across the world – from publicly listed and multinational corporations to new venture and private equity-backed technology companies. He has extensive experience of leading fast growth; start-up; spinouts; restructuring; turnaround and successful mergers and acquisitions, spending much of this time in Asia and the US. With a strong personal interest in the development of skills for industry, he co-founded the UK Electronics Skills Foundation and served on the SEMTA (now Enginuity) board for nine years, where he was Chairman of the committee managing their investment fund. He is a passionate advocate for diversity, equality, and inclusion. Indro has a degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University and graduated from the Wharton Advanced Management Program. He speaks several languages.
What is Supercharging Innovation?
In the Catapult Network’s Supercharging Innovation podcast, knowledge experts and leaders from the Catapult Network talk with some of the UK’s top industrial and academic leaders and parliamentarians to get their views on science, innovation and technology. Together, they are putting UK innovation under the spotlight and exploring the role of Government, businesses, the research community, private investors, and other innovative organisations in strengthening the economy through collaboration. Welcome to the Catapult Network’s Supercharging Innovation Podcast, subscribe now.
The Innovate UK Catapult Network provides a unique combination of cutting-edge R&D facilities and world-class technical expertise to support UK business innovation. Catapults are a critical element of Innovate UK’s portfolio of products and services, where the application of research is accelerated, and where new technologies are further developed, scaled up and realised. The Catapult Network is made up of nine world-leading technology and innovation centres with more than 65 national locations.
Jeremy Silver:
Hello, and welcome to Catapult Network's Supercharging Innovation podcast. My name is Jeremy Silver, chair of the Catapult Network. In this series of podcasts, I talked with some of the UK's top industry and academic leaders, business people, and parliamentarians to get their views on the future of innovation. The first series seems to have gone down quite well, and our listener numbers are growing. So it's a real pleasure to present an extra bonus edition.
Jeremy Silver:
On today's episode, I'm delighted to welcome Indro Mukherjee, CEO of Innovate UK, the UK's innovation agency, which forms a critical part of UK Research and Innovation, UKRI. Indro is a highly experienced technology CEO and business leader with a track record of leading innovation and technology commercialization in businesses of all sizes across the world. From publicly listed multinational corporations, to new ventures and private equity backed technology companies. He has extensive experience of leading fast growth, startups, spinouts, restructurings, turnarounds, and successful mergers and acquisitions, spending much of his time in Asia and the US. With a strong personal interest in the development of skills for industry, he co founded the UK Electronic Skills Foundation and served on the Scepter, now Ingenuity Board, for 9 years, where he was chairman of the committee managing their investment fund.
Jeremy Silver:
He is a passionate advocate for diversity, equality, and inclusion. Indro has a degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University and graduated from the Wharton Advanced Management Program. He speaks several languages. Indro, welcome. And what a pleasure it is to have you with us today.
Indro Mukerjee:
Well, thank you, Jeremy. And I'm pleased to be here, and I'm actually pleased to be your bonus addition as well. Thank you very much.
Jeremy Silver:
So you joined in your role as chief executive officer at Innovate UK. It was May of last year. You've been tasked with transitioning Innovate from a grant funding body to an agency focused on driving economic growth by working with companies to derisk, enable, and support innovation, and unleash private sector investment. What is it that excites you about the role?
Indro Mukerjee:
My career has been in technology. So I've led and worked in technology businesses all my working career. And and in that way, I've seen the innovation journey across different settings in different situations. And I've got a real passion for that journey. I've got a real passion for for doing things with ideas, for doing things with science and for turning things into real business.
Indro Mukerjee:
That is one strong element of this decision to come and join Innovate UK. The element, Jeremy, is that I really care very, very deeply about the success of our economy and society, and I believe that Inova UK has a strong role, a strong potential to make a real difference. And so for those reasons, I was really excited to take on this work. And and actually, May of last year seems in many ways just a couple of days ago because it's been so busy, so hectic. I've learned so many things that the time has just flown by.
Indro Mukerjee:
So I'm very pleased to be here and pleased to be doing this job.
Jeremy Silver:
So tell us a bit about your your sort of early sense.
Indro Mukerjee:
I mean,
Jeremy Silver:
I suppose we can still technically call this the early phase of your of you being in this role. What's your sense of innovate today, and what would you like it to become?
Indro Mukerjee:
It's kind of you. I don't actually feel that it's the early stage because I, I, got very stuck in very quickly to learning and doing at the same time. And so for me, in many ways, I feel like I've been here for, you know, I feel very established in this job. Innovate UK is the UK's innovation agency and in that sense it plays a very important role in the present and the future of our innovation economy. Since joining I immersed myself into really understanding what is a very, very broad ranging organisation with some incredible people, some really talented people with many backgrounds who present a very broad range of services to UK Business Innovation, cash based services through grants and loans, but also non cash based through advisory, networking, and helping businesses on their journeys to successful commercialization.
Indro Mukerjee:
So I see a very strong role for for Innovate UK in the go forward economy for the UK, And, actually, I'm I'm looking to make it stronger still. So we use 3 words, Jeremy, to describe what we do. Those are inspire, involve, and invest. And each of these words has a particular meaning in the vision that I have to how we could shape Innovate UK. Inspire is to do with the fact that we need to have inspiration and confidence building for people to want to go on a journey to become innovators, be it in startups, be it in medium sized organizations, or even in large organizations.
Indro Mukerjee:
And so the inspiration part is a very important part of what we do in terms of being able to showcase innovations in in order to be able to help people who want to go on that journey to go on it with confidence. The other word was involve, and and involvement is very important because we have a very widespread community in the UK of different kinds of organisations, different kinds of bodies, public, private, everything. So helping to coalesce and convene an ecosystem is really really important. Bringing in partners, working with partners, and and doing things in a partnership, and so this is why the word involve is a very important word for me and from the way I shape the organization going forward. And invest is a very important word too in the sense that all we do is invest.
Indro Mukerjee:
We use public money to pay for what we do and how we support UK business and that is an investment. It's an investment in the future. We want to see the businesses that we help flourish, we want a successful innovation economy, we want more private capital to come in and be leveraged by the public money that we spend. And so this is why we use these three words inspire, involve, and invest. Along the way, we strongly want to embrace diversity, not just in who we are, but also how we work and how we inspire others as well.
Indro Mukerjee:
Diversity, I think, is one of the single biggest areas for opportunity for the UK. Let me just pick you
Jeremy Silver:
up on one of the things that you've just said there about bringing the private sector closer. I'm just wondering, do you feel as if there are particular ways in which Innovate could do more to develop closer links with the private investment community. How do you see that working? I mean, the British Business Bank has been mentioned in this context as as potentially being a partner. Is is that part of the equation?
Indro Mukerjee:
I think there is a very strong partnership opportunity with the British Business Bank, and we've already started working on that in earnest. And I believe we've made a lot of progress already in the last months. In addition to that, I think it's very important to make connections with private investors and if you like facilitate their journey to being able to support the businesses that we have supported at the start. And so we are working on something, which we call internally as a codename transformer project and we we call it transformer because it's to do with linking together two sides of a system. One side of the system are the businesses that we have supported either through cash or non cash means And the other side is, if you like, the bench of excellent private investors that we have in the UK and some of those are Venture Capital, private equity, angel funds, but there are also corporate investors who have venture funds and venture arms.
Indro Mukerjee:
So anything we can do to make a platform to bring those 2 communities together in terms of investor partnerships, in terms of having tools and platforms where that coalescence can be made to be as efficient as possible is important. And so we're working on that and you'll see some things in that regard later in this half. And when I have more information that I can share, I definitely would like to share it with you, the Capital Network and others, and this would be an important facet of what we do going forward. But the private capital leverage is one of the absolutely most important things as you mentioned earlier.
Jeremy Silver:
Excellent. Obviously, as you know, number of the catapults have been engaged with the private investment community and have developed some interesting models. And so it would be, I think, really interesting to put those alongside one another and to see what works and to see how we can develop those collectively. Talking about the Catapult Network, and this is after all the Catapult Network podcast. Catapult's featured quite broadly and frequently in the innovation strategy that came out last year, and you've given them a lot of mention in your own strategy business plan that came out shortly afterwards.
Jeremy Silver:
How do you think the, individual catapults, the catapults network should work? What's the what's the best way that we should be working with Innovate UK?
Indro Mukerjee:
I think the Catapult network is a jewel in our crown, and I think it's a really important part of the UK's innovation ecosystem. The talent, the skills, the connections that we have already built up with and through the catalog network are extremely important assets for the UK innovation system. The ultimate measure of how we can work together to best effect is to be strategically coherent with each other. And so when there are important areas that have national focus, that are areas that we should be really, really making sure that we're successful in, we should be really joined up in how we work together with the Capital Network through our teams, our challenge teams, our sector teams, everything should be really partnering with the Catapult network. And that's the ultimate measure of whether we can do that.
Indro Mukerjee:
And whilst I do think, Jeremy, that there are some really great examples of that partnership and that connection, I would say that it's my ambition to have many more of those, and it's my ambition to, within this year, have a much more strategically coherent way of working. And I think we need to keep ourselves honest about this. I think we need to have high standards. I think we need to have really high ambitions and high standards. And so I really want to work with the Catapult network, with the chairs and CEOs of the Catapults to make sure that this strategic coherence is is there in a very viable way.
Indro Mukerjee:
I think also with our catapults network, it gives an opportunity to open our eyes to many areas that might be better served in our economy. And part of our future economy plan that we put out just before Christmas has the strong ambition to build a future economy. And so we should be brave enough to ask ourselves the question and be honest and say, look. Do we need more resources in areas a or b or c? And I see our catapult network is helping tremendously in that regard in terms of horizon scanning and inputs which could help form our overall strategy.
Indro Mukerjee:
I just mentioned one other thing, Jeremy, which is important and is sometimes the flip side of this, which some people don't like to talk about, but I think is very important, and that's value for money. We all spend public money, and everything we do has to be within the umbrella of getting that value. And so together, both Innovate UK, all of the partners, the Catapult network, and all the other parts of our, let's say, offer to the UK innovation, we should all keep ourselves very honest as far as value for money. And I think together, I think we could do this in a very strong partnership way.
Jeremy Silver:
I think there will be choruses of approval when you talk about the strategic alignment and the importance of that. One of the things is interesting just to pursue that thought a bit further. If you compare the government strategy under Greg Clark and the industrial strategy with the innovation strategy under Quasi Quateau, one of the sort of big differences that separates the 2 is is the emphasis in the industrial strategy on on a sort of sector by sector approach which has largely disappeared from the current strategy. And I just wondered from an innovation perspective, the catapults were very much established in a sector by sector perspective. And I'm just wondering which way do you play that?
Jeremy Silver:
From an innovation perspective, teams that we're gonna work in that context?
Indro Mukerjee:
I think innovation seems that within a short time, things change. And so I think we need a hybrid approach. I think we need to have a broad sectoral approach, which understands that there are differences broadly between different areas, but at the same time, enables us to be fluid within those and so that we can capture changes. And I think that's the biggest area that we really need to be alive to change, and we need to be honest about it. So this is why horizon scanning becomes very important.
Indro Mukerjee:
This is why open communication becomes very important, and this is why the strategic coherence I mentioned a second ago becomes very important because the innovation landscape doesn't stand still, it changes and so markets, businesses, technologies that a couple of years ago would have been relatively small are today very very big mainstream things and things have happened very very quickly. If you look at a number of areas in the last couple of years, a number of digital areas, a number of life sciences areas, just to make two examples, Things have changed incredibly just in the space in a couple of years. And so I think, Jeremy, we have to keep a fluid arrangement between setting out a broad ambition, but then being able to be quite quick in the way that we recalibrate within those broadly defined areas.
Jeremy Silver:
Clearly, given how fast markets change, and obviously some sectors move more quickly than others, but clearly we are seeing an accelerated rate of change and indeed digitalization probably increases that pace. What would you suggest to individual companies and to business owners for how they would engage then with the strategy, with Innovate in particular now. What's the sort of the the right way to kind of think about Innovate and get involved? I think what we're all trying to do is to encourage and incentivize investment, perhaps into areas where it still feels risky for business and small amounts of public money can really encourage people to invest. How do you see business engaging in this sort of approach?
Indro Mukerjee:
I think I see 2 connections in that regard. I see a proactive and a reactive. Proactively, I think by setting pathways and stimulating areas, I think we hope and plan and intend that there will be positive and productive output from that and businesses will get on and get in to those those areas But at the same time I think we have to be a service to business which in other words the business already knows what it wants to do and we have to then enable and help it to do it and in that regard, I think we need to be much more of a very clear and very open publicly accessible service. And so I see Innovate UK, one of the main roles for Innovate UK is to be such a public service and to have what I loosely describe as a very open shopfront such that businesses can find what they need from us through that shopfront and can then pick the elements that they need in terms of either cash support, non cash support, advisory, what whatever is there. I believe that we need to be more accessible in that regard, and this is another one of my big projects for this year and, you and industry will see a lot of changes in that regard.
Indro Mukerjee:
We want to be much more open, much more accessible, and much have a much clearer external shopfronts than we do than we have done. And so I want to just be open with you and to say that's one of my focus areas for this year. We clearly won't be able to support everybody. At the end of the day, as a public service, we do have limits in the in the amount of money that we can spend. And so whilst we would like to theoretically support every single innovator and every single innovation, we can't.
Indro Mukerjee:
Somehow
Jeremy Silver:
No. Well, I think I think we all appreciate that. The interesting thing is, of course, is I mean, it's been some time since the spending review in the autumn. And obviously, there is a process ongoing. When would it be reasonable for businesses to start expecting to see and hear more in terms of allocations and focus areas?
Indro Mukerjee:
I would expect that by the spring, we'll be clear on most of the full effects of the government spending review. And and and I can understand the challenges that people are going through at the moment because there are some nontrivial issues in terms of, you know, what's been happening with the economy over the last couple of years. Let's see how that pans out. But life goes on in the meantime, and we we're still very active in
Jeremy Silver:
We we all have to keep on keeping on. Absolutely. But I I think that well, we'll come back to you in the spring then. Perhaps we'll have you back and ask you to tell us a bit more when when some of those decisions have been made. Let me sort of change topic slightly, and that's still sticking with the innovation strategy.
Jeremy Silver:
One of the other things that it contained was the announcement of the nurse review of the research, development and innovation landscape across the country, and we also saw the announcement of a review of UKRI. Are you happy with where Innovate sits in the landscape in relation to UKRI? What the relationship is there?
Indro Mukerjee:
We have a very rich landscape in the UK. It's got lots of great organizations, institutions, and I'm a big fan of collaboration and working out how we can join together to add value to to UK business. And so I see plenty of opportunities to do that and I'm very pleased with what I've seen in terms of collaborations that we can make with research councils, with collaborations with other research and technology organizations and others in the ecosystem. So I think there's a huge amount of talent and a huge amount of potential, and I think it's up to us to to work out the best way to harness it. Of course, every now and then, government supported bodies have reviews.
Indro Mukerjee:
This is a normal part of the landscape, and the taxpayer would expect nothing less.
Jeremy Silver:
Certainly catapults are very familiar with the concept.
Indro Mukerjee:
So there we are. So you you're the experts of reviews. And so therefore, I think it's an understandable situation and and one that we just have to help and support as it goes along.
Jeremy Silver:
We have such a strong science base of the UK. The academic and the research credentials of the country are are extraordinary. I mean, in many fields, we're really second only to the US and China in the in the world. And yet we still have this gap somehow, this this challenge in translating that into commercial impact. What are your thoughts about what we need to do that's new, that's fresh, that that we haven't done before to to try and improve that?
Indro Mukerjee:
I think there's a lot that's new that's fresh. You know, the fact that we've had a very clear government innovation strategy through the Bay Secretary of State, Kwasi Kwasi, the fact that we have a strong active minister of science and innovation, George Freeman, and really making a very strong contribution since his appointment. Honestly, I think these are great signs to show that there is change in the air, and I think there is a lot of focus on the area of what we can do with, as you say, Jeremy, the the excellent science and research base that we have in the UK. When we, launched our plan of action, we acknowledged the strong science and research trends that we have in the UK, and we want to build on those. And so the the plans that we have, I think, put us in a place where we are going to be very, very determined to collaborate and to work across areas where we can really drive innovation and drive innovation in the ways that our plan of fraction outlines.
Indro Mukerjee:
And to anybody who wants to look at the plan, which is effectively a blueprint for what we're gonna be doing over the next 3 to 4 years. That's fully available and publicly available online. It includes a series of 12 commitments to UK Business. We call them the we will statements. I won't go into them all, but I want to encourage people listening to this to look up the plan for action online and look at those 12 week rule statements because they are very clear, and they are very bold.
Indro Mukerjee:
And so I think we are in a very strong environment and atmosphere to want to do a lot with our excellent science and research base and to help commercialization and to help business who want to go on an innovation journey. So I think this is a great time for that. And the UK, as you know, Jeremy, now has very strong ambitions in this area. So I think this is an area where Absolutely.
Jeremy Silver:
Absolutely. It's fascinating from our perspective. This is from a digital catapult perspective. When we look at AI, which is an area that we're very active in developing, that when you look at the publication record of UK universities in terms of academic papers, we are literally second only to the US and China in terms of publishing expertise in artificial intelligence. And we are also seeing, as we said, a huge amount of investment in artificial intelligence from the private sector and investment in companies focused in certain areas.
Jeremy Silver:
So FinTech and digital health, very, very strong. Where we see a gap, interestingly, is in the more difficult areas for applying things like artificial intelligence, for example, in applying it into manufacturing. And I just wondered where, you know, when you see that, does that sort of analysis appeal? Is that the sort of the way in which we can use public money effectively? Not not to chase what is already being well funded by the private sector, but to seed the ground and try and open up new areas.
Jeremy Silver:
So the use of artificial intelligence in a manufacturing context hasn't attracted very much investment at all. I think the number was less than 3% of the early stage companies that we surveyed working in machine learning and in artificial intelligence were focused on manufacturing. Does that provide a model
Indro Mukerjee:
for the way forward? I think there's definitely a role to play in matching public and private money together. And the rule of public money is not duplicate what the private money is already supporting. That would, you know, in theory, if the private money were enough, you wouldn't need to spend public money on this. That's theory.
Indro Mukerjee:
And frankly, though, that will be a situation which I think would be in theory one that you would not need to spend the public money at all. The reality, of course, is that you do need to spend the public money, and you do because systematically the private money doesn't cover areas. And so what you have to have a philosophy for is if the private money is not covering it and it's important, do we need to support it until the point that the private money can then come in? By the way, I'm absolutely not an economist or an expert from this area. I'm just a business guy.
Indro Mukerjee:
But sometimes the economists and the the experts call this a market failure, which I don't hugely like that expression, but that's what they call it. So the market failure means that the private sector hasn't taken it on by itself, and so you need to put public money into it until the time that it then becomes successful enough to go forward. The example that you gave, I think, is a very good one, and I think there are many others. And I think that's why the collaboration across all the parts of the Innovate UK product services and and support mechanisms working with the capital network is really important because what we need to do together is to spot the areas where we should be focusing the capital that we use. Definitely we shouldn't be putting money into areas that are well covered already.
Indro Mukerjee:
That would be really not a very smart thing to do.
Jeremy Silver:
It is interesting. And, of course, the the the analysis of how to identify those sectors is not straightforward and requires a fair amount of resource to achieve it in its own right. One other interesting announcement that came last year was the confirmation of the establishment of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which seems to be a sort of another angle on on how to become a science superpower and how to sort of, you know, attack the market. And we also heard about the new Science and Technology Council that's gonna be chaired by Patrick Vallance. I just wondered, you know, in relation to those, if you can share a bit of understanding about what the task of those 2 entities might be, and they're obviously rather different from one another.
Jeremy Silver:
But and how does Innovate fit in with that?
Indro Mukerjee:
As far as ARIA is concerned, firstly, you mentioned, I think that any significant investment in research and innovation is positive. And so we very much look forward to the establishment of ARIA, to the appointment of the people who are going to run it, and we would hope and expect to be one of the first people to make appointments to set out how we collaborate together. And so I'm very much looking forward to doing that, and I believe the basis for that is very, very significant. I think the Office For Science and Technology strategy and and other things are very important because I think what we need to do in the UK UK is to become much more strategic in how we make choices, set targets, set ambitions. The world is a very big place and we definitely can't do everything.
Indro Mukerjee:
And so we need to to choose and target what we can do. And so I think that harnessing the smart people that we have in a way that can help us to do that, I think, will be very positive. And I think Innovate will play a very strong role in supporting these programs, and I I look forward to working with those those groups.
Jeremy Silver:
So one of the other themes that government's been pursuing very actively is their leveling up policy, and we have been expecting a white paper on the subject for for some time now. There's obviously a lot of work going on there. I think the catapults have been doing really their fair share of establishing a kind of a levelled up approach in terms of their geographic location and then they're working with local communities. I'm just wondering it's clearly an an Innovate UK priority as well. Given what the catapult infrastructure already looks like, how do you think we might work together?
Jeremy Silver:
How Innovate and the Catapults might work together towards assisting this sort of leveling up approach?
Indro Mukerjee:
We're pretty prominent in the leveling up discussions because we already have, Jeremy, a substantially good position across the UK much better than most. We support businesses across the whole of the UK, so all the English regions and the devolved nations. And we have a regional presence, regional and national presence throughout all those areas. When you look at our total funding and look at the total funding that we apply be it through our sectors, our challenges, our knowledge transfer network, our capspot network, all the funding that we put into the system, around 2 thirds is outside London and the southeast already. So we already are very strongly behind the so called leveling up agenda, and we think place and geography is extremely important.
Indro Mukerjee:
The spread that we have of locations or be it in terms of capital sites, be it in terms of people, be it in terms of people that we support is already very very significant. We already have active strategic dialogue with the English regions through their mayors and local leaders as well as the devolved nations through the governments of the devolved nations as well as the UK government representatives of the Devolved Nation administrations. I guess what I'm trying to say is that all in all I think we are very committed to this this agenda and so we see a huge relevance for it and we think place is a very important aspect of everything that we're doing. And so we aim in future to have also very strong place related strategies in terms of what we do. So I very much welcome this this work.
Indro Mukerjee:
And, of course, I look forward to seeing what's in the white paper. I haven't seen it. As soon as it's out, we'll read it, we'll study it, and, we'll take it very seriously.
Jeremy Silver:
There's quite a lot of infrastructure that we've already got deployed around the countries, the nations, the regions. Is there more do you think that we should be doing? Is should we be extending our approach collectively between innovate and the catapults? Should we be adding more catapults?
Indro Mukerjee:
I think adding more catapults is a question we have to ask ourselves all the time in terms of the developments in the market, developments in industry, and developments in technology. So we need to keep alive for this. But we also need to keep alive for how we better work with the ecosystem in general. So in other words, what I'm what I mean is that if there are organizations that are there already and they're maybe not part of our funding structure, they're not part of the Innovate UK support network, then we should collaborate with them rather than reinventing the wheel. So I'm very keen to simultaneously do horizon scanning, be open for opportunities, but at the same time not reinvent the wheel.
Indro Mukerjee:
And so let's see what we can do in terms of partnerships. Now naturally, if there is a very big need and it can't be served by anything that already exists, then we have to make the case to make an investment. We need to be open to that. So I would look first of all to what's in the landscape and not reinventing the wheel and then if there isn't anything I think we would go to that next step and decide what to invest in.
Jeremy Silver:
Perhaps not reinventing the wheel, but maybe we can invent the hoverboard.
Indro Mukerjee:
Yes.
Jeremy Silver:
Let's talk a little bit about skills. You've you've done a huge amount of work in skills and have really seen the importance of this in other parts of your career. How does Innovate support that sense of getting the right skills in the right place? And and is there a role for catapults in that?
Indro Mukerjee:
There definitely is. So skills is really essential, Jeremy, because if we don't have the skills and talent pipeline, we're just not going to be able to do what we want to do as a nation. We're not going to be able to fulfill the innovation strategy, we're not going to fulfill our plan for action, so skills and talent is a very very important thing. There are catapults who are working on those areas already. We showcased already a number of initiatives in terms of the development of apprentices, the sharing and distribution of training, and I think these are very, very important areas to to collaborate on going forward.
Indro Mukerjee:
And if I may I'd like to bring in the twin aspect of skills and talent at least for me it's the twin aspect and that is equality, diversity and inclusion because in order to get the skills and talent that we we need for the future we have to be very very smart and very very open and very very inclusive because if we just mine the scenes of talent that we've been mining previously I don't think we're going to get those people. So I think we need to be open, we need to have our minds and hearts open to looking beyond and enabling a strong sense of inclusivity such that talented people feel confident to want to become innovators. They want to work with Innovate UK, they want to do things to contribute to the innovation system and this is a really important aspect of this whole equation going forward. And so for me, Jeremy, those two things are inextricably linked, and I don't think we're gonna meet our talent and skills needs unless we really embrace looking at the existing talent and skills that we all the talent that we have and give it a chance.
Indro Mukerjee:
And I think that that's why anything to do with more diversity, more inclusion is essential to building this pipeline.
Jeremy Silver:
And what does that mean in practical terms, do you think? Do we have to reach out more actively into new parts of the community? And how do we go about doing that? Do you think
Indro Mukerjee:
We do. We have to reach out actively. That's why the word inspire was there. We have to definitely reach out actively to touch, enable, connect with different parts of the community even starting at school age to inspire people to want to go on a journey to want to become innovators. We also have to make sure our systems and our approach is friendly and inclusive enough.
Indro Mukerjee:
Last week, I was proud to host a conference, which was aimed at asking ourselves the question as Innovate UK, how open are our systems to innovators who are disabled? And I was proud to have a number of businesses there, a number of disability rights campaigners, a number of disability support organizations, a number of people across government and bringing all these people together to spend a very very vibrant and very honest open and in some cases even very emotional workshop and conference focused on how can we just be honest and open about ourselves as to how we are seen by innovators who are disabled and as you know disability can be things that you can see and things that you you can't see. See. There are many different kinds. Education is a very important starting point and openness and sincerity.
Indro Mukerjee:
I'd like us as a community to become much more open and also show us ourselves a mirror as to how we're seen by others and I think if we can do that I think we can become much more inclusive and I think we can then really communicate in terms of building up our talent and skills base.
Jeremy Silver:
Andrea, thanks so much for your openness and your honesty about that. Clearly, an enormously important area and one that we both need to look within our own organizations to improve, but also to try and encourage the partners and and companies that we work with to do the same. As you know, the Catapult Network is developing a charter for equality, diversity, and inclusion. And one that I hope by the time people hear this podcast may already have been signed by all the catapults, but it's certainly the move in the right direction. What other measures do you think catapults should take, businesses should take?
Jeremy Silver:
Now there's something here about establishing role models, isn't there? There's something about having people in positions of influence that all members of the community can identify with, as you say, to aspire to as and be inspired by. What other steps do you think we should all be taking?
Indro Mukerjee:
I think the charter is an important step, and indeed I'll be, speaking at the launch of this event in February and really passionately interested to to do that. The reason this is important across all the things that we do in sport is that I think saying that you are taking something seriously is an important step. Actions are important and sometimes they speak louder than words, but sometimes you have to start the word first in order to lead to the action And so a statement of intent is important. So I support Charter, and I support having a bold statement of intent. I agree with you about role models.
Indro Mukerjee:
And I agree with you that role models are important of all different types and from all different kinds of backgrounds, and it's very important for people to see a connection with someone that they can relate to. And I think that's really important. It's it was important for all of us and all of us have had role models of one type or another.
Jeremy Silver:
Did you have a role model that you particularly
Indro Mukerjee:
My primary role models were my parents. And so for me, the rather particular, let's say, background I had economically and also I have an Indian father, Italian mother growing up in London. So that was a very interesting learning period for me. And so those were my role models. But I think the provision of moral models given that we are now in a world of social media, which obviously didn't exist when I was growing up and I suspect didn't exist when you were growing up as well.
Indro Mukerjee:
So I think that role models need to reflect the society and culture that exists and and prevails. And so I think today's role models are very, very different from people that we could have aspired to when when perhaps you and I were young. I also think that being open and honest about consequences is very important. For example, you could have a job advert with 10 attributes or, let's say an invitation to a a tender or a funding process or anything. 1 person who may be very persuade themselves or be persuaded that they are only partially qualified and yet another person who may be much less qualified could persuade themselves or be persuaded that they're actually more qualified.
Indro Mukerjee:
And I think this is part of why we have to be really open on words that we use, how we project ourselves, what image we're creating, and just be honest about it and just put yourself into the position of the other person. And so to do that, you have to be as broad a thinker as possible. I think this is a journey for all
Jeremy Silver:
of us as leaders. Indra, thanks so much for your time today, and we we're almost out of time. But there's one final fun question that I've asked everyone who's contributed to this series, which is about their favorite innovation. And some have referred to obvious modern utilities like their smartphone. One of them was much more specific and talked about his inflatable smart cycle helmet.
Jeremy Silver:
So the moment of truth, the most important question of the whole podcast, what's your favorite innovation?
Indro Mukerjee:
My favorite innovation is the next one that's gonna happen that I don't know about. I would say that, the reason why we are all innovators and the reason why innovation is very important is because we should be worried about the future and positive about the future. So I'd like to see the next great innovation that comes, and that would be my favorite one. And and actually the one that Innovate UK and I can contribute to and feel proud that we've spent public money in doing that. So that will be my answer to your question.
Jeremy Silver:
Thanks so much, Ingo. Thank you very much for being my special guest today. Thanks for joining us.
Indro Mukerjee:
You're very welcome. Pleased to be here. Thank you, Jeremy.
Jeremy Silver:
That's all for today's Supercharging Innovation podcast. Thanks for listening. Join us again for the next podcast episode, and make sure you subscribe to receive notification of new releases. You can find us wherever you go to get your podcasts. Goodbye.