Scotland is funding innovation

Innovation is to play a central part in Scotland’s economy, according to the Scottish Government, which last year committed capital investment of £1.5bn into centres to provide partnerships between academia and business. 
Finance Secretary John Swinney told the recent Holyrood debate on the economy that business research and development has increased by 29 per cent since 2007, and university research was buoyed by the results from the inaugural Research Excellence Framework (REF). Seventy-seven per cent of Scottish research was judged ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent, compared to a UK figure of 76.1 per cent. In new criteria which assessed the impact research has had outside of universities, such as on the economy, society, public policy, culture and the quality of life, 85.8 per cent was judged to have had an ‘outstanding’ or ‘very considerable’ impact compared to a UK average of 83.9 per cent.
“That will be central to developing the focus on innovation that will emerge from the Government’s economic strategy,” Swinney told parliament.

Even Swinney concedes the idea isn't new, and this week paid tribute to the previous Labour administration for getting the ball rolling.

Higher education think-tank Million+ has praised Scotland’s more inclusive approach, which will see all Scottish higher education institutions receive baseline support from the Scottish Funding Council from this year.

Funding for research comes from a variety of sources, however, including private and charitable sources and the UK Research Council.  
Million+ chief executive Pam Tatlow told Holyrood’s Universities conference that research funding is the greatest inequity in student resource. Indeed, in 2012/13, three quarters of the UK’s total recurrent research funding was allocated to just 31 universities, leaving 130 universities to share the remaining 25 per cent. “People won’t like this, however, five universities in Scotland have an average institutional resource per student they teach of £5,000. The highest is about eight and a half. Four universities have an average of about £1,500. Scotland’s very good at acknowledging universities are about research, teaching, scholarship and knowledge exchange, what we’re saying is account needs to be taken of the institutional impact of government investment in both higher education (teaching and other grants) and research,” said Tatlow.
Private investment follows government support, she argued. “Countries like Finland lever in much higher levels of private investment because they invest the public funds well.”