Tag: economics

Wellbeing: increasingly a crucial public policy goal

SUII Director, Charlie Woods, discusses the continued attention being dedicated to conceptions of wellbeing in research, policy and practice.

SUII Director, Charlie Woods, discusses the continued attention being dedicated to conceptions of wellbeing in research, policy and practice.

It has been four years since our themed programme on wellbeing (summarised here), which looked at the insights from taking a wider wellbeing approach to public policy and practice. Over this period, there has been a steady increase in interest in promoting wellbeing as a policy objective. This note highlights a couple of recent examples.

Continue reading “Wellbeing: increasingly a crucial public policy goal”

Innovation in Action

Innovation is one of four priorities in the Scottish Government’s 2015 – 2018 Economic Strategy, and is considered vital for the development of a competitive, sustainable, resilient and prosperous economy. Innovation is a vital component in improving productivity in any economy and as Paul Krugman said “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.”

Fostering cultures of innovation is the current SUII programme theme (project details here http://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/Innovation2016.aspx ).

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European Union Innovation Scorecard

The EU’s Innovation Scorecard classifies Scotland as an ‘Innovation Follower’ (see map). But within the overall assessment there is a much more varied picture. The biggest contrast is perhaps between the level of business and public sector R&D, with the latter being well above the EU average. Continue reading “Innovation in Action”