Prestigious EU Appointment for Academic

EU appoints Dr Ammon Salter to High Level Panel on pan-European research and innovation performance

Prestigious EU Appointment for School Academic

Ammon Salter, who is a Reader in the Business School and the Research Director of the UK Innovation Research Centre, has been appointed to a High Level Panel to advise the European Commission on a new indicator to measure Europe's progress towards becoming a more innovative economy.

EU leaders agreed at the Spring European Council that a new, wider indicator, should be produced, similar to recent Innovation Strategy of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which was announced earlier this week and in which the School also played a significant role.

Said Dr Salter: "We've been tasked to develop a headline indicator to help benchmark the progress of the Europe 2020 strategy. The new indicator will help to assess the research and innovation performance of Europe as well as providing an important signal of key priorities in innovation policy."

The work will allow governments to compare Europe's performance against its main trading partners and will feed into the implementation of the Research and Innovation Strategy for Europe.

The prestigious appointment to the panel, led by Professor Andreu Mas-Colell, Secretary General of the European Research Council and Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, is further proof of the high regard in which the School is held for its work in re-defining innovation in the knowledge economy age.

"Our strong presence is this area is due to the support we have received for our research from the ESRC, EPSRC and others, helping us to advance innovation policy and practice,' Dr Salter stated.


Notes to editors:


The UK~IRC is a joint venture between the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College Business School to further research and knowledge exchange on innovation policy and practice.

The UK~IRC has a large-scale, multi-year, research programme and a Knowledge Hub to engage policy-makers and practitioners in innovation research. The research programme explores open innovation, service innovation, online communities and innovation policy-making. Through the Hub, the aim is to maximise the effect of the research on policy and practice, so as to help the UK face its social, environmental and economic challenges.

The Centre is co-funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC), the National Endowment for Science, technology and the Arts (NESTA) and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB)