Innovation challenges

Analysing available labour force data, job listings, Research and Development data and company information this project will identify innovation-intense industries in South Yorkshire, innovation clusters and will investigate how these compare with other UK combined authority regions.

Engineers on site in hard hats
Off

The project will provide South Yorkshire with a deep insight into its ‘innovation ecosystem’, including the performance and interaction of both public and private agents. Visualisations will bring the data together and provide a benchmark for measuring the impact of future interventions.

Project aims

  • Establish existing barriers to innovation in South Yorkshire
  • Identify existing regional innovation businesses/specialisms/strengths, and potential ‘competitive advantage’ opportunities, to build upon
  • Define spatial clusters of innovative activity and agglomeration benefits
  • Consider sustainability opportunities and implications within the analysis

This project collates data on patents, jobs and UKRI funded research projects to visualise how innovation is distributed across South Yorkshire and within comparator areas. Undertaken as part of the South Yorkshire Office for Data Analytics Pilot, this tool has been developed to respond to the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority's (SYMCA) need to better understand the distribution of innovative activity within the region and to identify clusters of such activity.

You can access the interactive map and the project report below.

Map

Full report 

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Watch the Innovation Challenges webinar

Project team:

Professor Vania Sena, Management School (Principal Investigator)

Dr. Jesse Matheson, Department of Economics (Co-Investigator)

Dr. Enrico Vanino, Department of Economics (Co-Investigator)

Dr. Joe Molloy, Research and Innovation IT (Data Scientist)