June 2007 Third Edition now available.

Innovation has become one of the 'hot topics' in the early 21st century. Without continuous change in what organisations (public or private) offer the world and the ways in which they create and deliver those offerings, there is a risk of stagnation and, at the limit, of failing to survive. At a national level there is extended discussion about what can and should be done to help create the climate in which entrepreneurship can flourish and where new ideas can be rapidly adopted and diffused. This is a theme increasingly being addressed at regional and local level, not least driven by the realisation that there is no 'one size fits all' solution but instead a need for configuring to suit more specific needs.

And at the level of the individual enterprise the challenge remains one of organising and managing what can at times appear an unmanageable, risky and near-random process. The difficulty is not only acquiring and building on models of 'good practice' around innovation, but understanding that it is a moving frontier, constantly throwing up new challenges and new variants on old themes. In particular organizations these days are having to confront the issue of thinking about and managing innovation as players in wider and overlapping networks of actors rather than as self-contained entities.

All of this places innovation at the centre of the management research agenda - and it is reflected in 'sustained innovation' being one of AIM's three core themes. Although there is a need for more research, we also need to ensure that what already exists is known about more widely - and in the process hopefully to enable new connections and better networking across the UK community of researchers, practitioners and policy-agents.

Download the Directory

This Directory forms part of a wider range of activities designed to identify the UK innovation research community and to improve its networking. It contains information about research activities and people: our approach is to distil publicly-available material from websites, etc. and then invite people to update/expand on the entry. As the coverage expands we will be adding search and other facilities to the basic knowledge base. We want this to be an open resource, widely available and containing as much information as individuals/groups wish to offer about their activities. We would be pleased to have any feedback on ways to help make it more useful -and more widely used.

To view additional information relating to other AIM Innovation projects visit the AIM Innovation Projects section.

For additional information relating to the AIM Innovation Directory please contact:

Andrew Kirchner
Cranfield School of Management
Tel: +44 (0)1234 751122
Email: Andrew Kirchner

To find out more about Our Research projects please click here.

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