Innovation Exchange

INNOVATION EXCHANGE LAUNCHES WITH £200K FUND FOR BEST THIRD SECTOR INNOVATORS

Phil Hope, Minister for the Third Sector, today launched the Innovation Exchange with the announcement of a new £200,000 fund to support the programme’s work in 2008-09, drawing on investment provided by NESTA.

The Exchange was set up to foster innovation within the sector and to find ways of improving relationships between third sector social innovators, public service commissioners and investors.
The Innovation Exchange forms part of the Government’s ‘Partnership in Public Services Action Plan’, which aims to remove barriers to greater third sector involvement in public services. The Exchange will offer innovators access to online resources and provide a point of contact both with other innovators and with appropriate sources of investment. It will also offer tailored support, training and guidance to the most promising innovators, helping them to see the impact of their ideas on improving public services.

Speaking at today’s launch Phil Hope, Minister for the Third Sector, said:
“I am delighted to be here today to launch the Innovation Exchange and to support its important work in increasing third sector involvement in the delivery of public services. The Innovation Exchange provides much-needed recognition of the sector’s vital research and development and will help third sector organisations not to give away their best ideas but to work together to improve them and to grow their own work.”

“I am particularly pleased that the Exchange will begin by focusing on young people and on adult social care, areas where there is a vast amount of untapped knowledge and creativity within the sector.”

Valerie Hannon, Director of Strategy at The Innovation Unit, and a lead partner behind the Innovation Exchange, said:
“The ministerial launch has provided the opportunity for The Innovation Exchange to announce the first two themes around which it will built networks, develop innovative capacity, and seek to make connections with investors and commissioners.

“The first will be the theme of supporting independent living. This high priority issue has established arrangements for commissioning, but is also undergoing radical changes through the introduction of direct payments and individualised budgets, there is strong innovation within the third sector, but connecting this with new forms of demand is a challenge.

“The second focus is that of young people: the excluded, marginalised and the at-risk. Again, this is an issue attracting high levels of public interest and concern, and investment potential is high. Innovation from the third sector is healthy. These two themes are will be the first around which collaborative networks involving commissioners and investors will be formed; and more will follow.”