Life Sciences and Health in South West Wales: A Sub-regional Innovation Ecosystem

Abstract

South Wales has been nurturing a nascent Life Sciences cluster through initiatives including the Institute of Life Science (ILS) at Swansea University Medical School. ILS aims to provide an entrepreneurial learning environment transcending industry, healthcare, academia and further education. This chapter describes how efforts to develop the sector have been undertaken through structured efforts of Understanding, Acting and Measuring, resulting in new ventures formed through spin-outs to commercialise research output and collaboration with other enterprises. Building upon concepts of clustering and regional innovation systems, the approach demonstrates the harnessing of a long-term strategy involving smart specialisation resulting in emerging and meaningful economic impact. Networking and knowledge exchange are shown as core components of a system reaching across wider sectors involving a diversity of skills. The conclusions demonstrate how entrepreneurial learning has also helped develop further actions including Talent Bank in support of the region's broader ambition of A Regional Collaboration for Health (ARCH).

Social commerce Open Innovation in healthcare management: an exploration from a novel technology transfer approach

“…Harnessing the potential of Life Sciences & Health innovation, particularly for the combined goals of improved population health and economic development has been a long-standing ambition in south west Wales (Davies et al, 2018). The region was at the epicentre of the first industrial revolution through its vast coal and steel industries (Mathias, 2013).…”

A sub-regional innovation ecosystem Life sciences and health in the Swansea Bay City Region

“…This includes recent announcement of an 'Internet of Health & Wellbeing' as part of the Swansea Bay City Region Internet Coast City Deal, aimed at the development of ICT-enabled product and service opportunities (SU, 2017). This sits within the context of Swansea being recognised as a UNESCO Entrepreneurial Learning City, with the Life Sciences and Health agenda and role of the university at its centre (Davies et al, 2018), reflecting the academic and regional transitions to a more entrepreneurial networked mode of working presented by Etzkowitz (2004) This ambition links with the concept of Territorial Innovation Systems which started with the initial idea of national systems presented by Lundvall (1992) and Nelson (1993), followed by development at regional level (RIS) (Cooke, 2001b), including specifically the case of Wales. Abbey et al (2008) took this further to the sub-regional level within south west Wales.…”

Towards Better Business Cases

“…However, while the FGA presents a bold ambition from Welsh Government, there has from its outset been debate about how delivery of its broad goals can be incorporated with assurance into policy and action (Davies, 2016). Prior study of the initiative against the backdrop of the FGA emphasised the alignment of the long-term perspective and ambitions, though also the complexity and challenge that this introduced (Davies et al, 2018). These challenges point to both the potential for the Options Filter Framework and the role of Monitoring and Evaluation, as explored in the Project Evaluation.…”