'Public services should innovate more' says Swinney

Innovation should be embraced across every sector in Scotland, Finance Secretary John Swinney has said.

The Deputy First Minister was speaking at 'Innovation with Impact, a Universities Scotland event held in the Parliament which showcased the work of collaborations between universities and businesses.

Swinney said it wasn’t just universities who had to embrace innovation, but “right across the company base of Scotland”. Including the public and third sector. “Innovation can’t, forgive me, be just the reserve of universities. It also has to be the reserve of the public services in Scotland. We as a country must embrace at our heart the concept of perpetual innovation,” he said.

More surprisingly, the Deputy First Minister found time to credit the Labour party: “If we go back to the period of the previous administration, they laid the ground work for this and had to work very hard to win this argument about the connections between universities and business and the wider innovation community, and we’re determined to build on those secure foundations. So we should. We have a world-class product here.”

On Tuesday night every higher education establishment in Scotland descended on the parliament’s Garden Lobby to showcase their partnerships with business in ‘Innovation with impact’. It was of little surprise there was no absentees, since every single one of them produces ‘world-leading’ research, according to the REF audit in December.

Professor Pete Downes, Convener of Universities Scotland was sure to bring it up, too. “It’s a tremendous reflection of the great diversity of Scottish Higher Education,” he told a crowd itching to sample the wares of the University of Highlands and Islands’ whisky samples.

In terms of the impact of research on wider society, assessed for the first time by the inaugural REF, Scotland fared very well indeed in the REF, and Downes singled out Heriot-Watt University implementing targeted strategies for preventing homelessness, Glasgow Caledonian University “where research into HIV-related stigma has led to the World Health Organisation adopting its recommendations”, and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s initiative to bring music to disadvantaged communities and young people.

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