One year of leading UKRI
Chief executive Ian Chapman reflects on his first year at the wheel – and what comes next
It has now been just over a year since I took up the role of Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation. It has been an immense privilege to work with our researchers and innovators, whose talent, ambition and commitment are among the UK's greatest strengths.
I believe that everyone in a high-performing organisation should be able to tell you what they are there to achieve together. Throughout the year I have been talking about a simple but ambitious mission: to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth. Those few words capture what I believe UKRI exists to do. Each of those three clauses is equally important, and when we are at our best, we find symbiosis between them, not tension or competition.
Once everyone in an organisation is clear on its purpose, the next step is to make sure that your spending and delegations align. With that in mind, earlier this year we published UKRI’s five year strategy – matching the money to the mission. We have made substantial changes to our systems so that it is very clear that our forward spending advances knowledge, improves lives or drives growth.
The work is not over yet, and UKRI will continue to evolve in the coming years to be more agile, more confident and more focused on the outcomes from our investments.
The backdrop for this change was a remarkable vote of confidence from government in the power of research and innovation. UKRI achieved a record four-year budget, reflecting the government’s belief that research and innovation must be central to the UK's future prosperity. As I have said previously, it is a privileged position at a time of constrained public finances – and one that carries significant responsibility.
Alongside that vote of confidence came a challenge: to be clearer how public investment translates into outcomes for the public. The public rightly expects us to invest their money wisely. Ministers rightly expect us to deliver impact. Our partners rightly expect greater clarity over how our investments align with national priorities. As an organisation trusted with billions of pounds of public funding, we have a responsibility not simply to support excellent activity, but to ensure that our investments collectively deliver the greatest possible benefit for the UK.
As we have implemented these changes, some members of the sector are experiencing negative implications. The reality is that meaningful reform requires us to make adjustments in the short term if we are to deliver a more effective system in the long term.
We endeavour to generate the largest impact for the UK public, noting that impact has many forms, from furthering our understanding, to supporting more high-quality jobs, to helping companies to grow in all parts of our country. To do this we have to make choices, noting that we don’t expect everyone to agree with those choices, but try to do so fairly. We will not try to pursue every opportunity, but be deliberate and selective.
Positive progress
And while there is still much work to do, I believe we are now beginning to see the shape of what comes next.
The strategy is moving from concept to delivery. Major investments are being committed, for example in critical technologies such as AI, space science and engineering biology. We have provided greater visibility of future opportunities. New priority programmes are coming online aligned to the industrial strategy’s eight sectors, including opportunities in advanced manufacturing, creative industries, and national security and defence.
Flagship initiatives such as the R&D Missions Accelerator Programme are demonstrating how we can bring together discovery, innovation and delivery around national priorities. These programmes reflect the kind of system-level approach that UKRI is uniquely positioned to support, drawing on the breadth of expertise across our councils to target fast, applied progress in vital areas.
Innovate UK is also implementing a refreshed prospectus and approach, with a stronger focus on helping businesses navigate the journey from innovative idea to commercial scale-up. That matters because the UK's future prosperity depends not only on generating brilliant ideas, but then turning those ideas into products, services, companies and jobs that benefit people here in the UK. We have changed from investing in projects to investing in companies, helping them to scale to become industry giants.
Next phase of change
Having aligned our spending allocations to our strategy, the next step is to ensure we have the right skills to deliver on our goals inside UKRI, the systems to make sure those right people have the right priorities at the right time with the right tools to do their jobs. And in parallel, to strengthen the nature of our relationships with our partners, from local government, to research institutes, companies and investors.
Many of our university partners are thinking about the skills needed in their organisations for the future, and UKRI will not insulate itself from the need to address that ourselves. Each of the councils is going through an exercise to identify their operating models for the future.
A big part of that is our determination to improve the experience of applying for, and receiving, funding so that our talented community can do its work more quickly and easily. Too often, researchers tell us that application processes can be lengthy, complex and resource intensive. They are right to challenge us on that.
We are actively exploring ways to simplify and accelerate our processes while maintaining the quality, rigour and fairness on which the UK’s research reputation depends. This includes considering how new technologies, including artificial intelligence, might support more efficient assessment processes in the future. The aims are simple: to reduce unnecessary burden, to provide decisions more quickly, to allow researchers and innovators to focus more of their energy on the work that matters, and likewise to allow UKRI staff to spend less time running assessment processes and more time thinking about research strategy, UK competitiveness and helping researchers to deliver outcomes.
We are not “just a funder”, responsible for running a process. We are experts in generating value for the public by both performing, and investing in, research and innovation and ensuring that our investments are both equitable and focussed on delivering outcomes.
To succeed, we will need to work concertedly with all of our partners towards a shared purpose. That means working in true partnership with businesses (large and small), with government (national and local), with research organisations (catapults, institutes and universities) and with all types of investors. I promise that we will move towards longer-term commitment to our partners; being more inventive in how we construct joint programmes; and giving you more certainty so you can invest with confidence.
That will require continued effort from our staff and our partners, and I am extremely grateful for the professionalism and commitment they have shown during this period. The progress we have made so far is the result of thousands of people working hard to deliver change while continuing to deliver world-class research and innovation every day.
One year in, I remain as optimistic as I was on my first day. Not because the challenges have disappeared, but because I know both the size of the opportunity and also the quality of the people at our disposal in pursuing that opportunity. The work ahead may be substantial, but the reward will be a sustainable research system fit for the future which is at the heart of our country’s success.
Ian Chapman is the chief executive of UKRI.