Power in numbers: driving innovation and growth through the ‘triple helix model’

When it comes to ensuring the UK’s strengths in science, research and invention translate into economic growth, it turns out that the old adage of ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd’ needs to be turned on its head

Ahead of the June 2025 Spending Review, the UK government announced a £500m fund designed to strengthen high-potential innovation clusters in the regions and “deliver impact, at scale” – unlocking economic growth and boosting the country’s competitiveness on the global stage.

The Local Innovation Partnerships Fund (LIPF) – which is led by UK Research and Innovation – runs from 2026 to 2031 and earmarks a minimum of £30m in government funding for 10 UK regions, as well as a competitive funding opportunity of up to £20m for high-potential innovation clusters in other areas of the country.

Through co-creation with UK Research and Innovation, partners will work to identify and assemble a “compelling” portfolio of activities that draw upon local research and innovation strengths. The innovation clusters must show potential to help solve the country’s “biggest challenges” and to “unlock discoveries that improve people’s lives”, the government said, which has also designed the LIPF to give local leaders “skin in the game”.

Greater than the sum of its parts

At the heart of the LIPF is the ‘triple helix model of innovation’, in which the expertise and perspectives of three vital players – local government, industry and academia – are brought together to harness the strengths of regional sectors, and to accelerate scientific and technological breakthroughs to market.

For Leo Boe, innovation and investment strategy expert at PA Consulting, it’s not unusual for a degree of collaboration to be seen between two of the three strands of the triple helix model – but rarely three.

But, he adds, if two is the start, then three is the spark. “The LIPF stands out because it incentivises all three to work together. And that has great potential to increase knowledge exchange, create a consortia to leverage different types of funding and greater investment, accelerate the route from initial research to commercialisation, grow sovereign capability, and ultimately deliver regional economic growth and international competitiveness,” he explains.

A guiding mind

However, Boe warns that the triple helix model “only works” when it’s treated like an operating model, “not just a label slapped on a project that has no real intention behind it”.

He adds: “For this reason, you need a guiding mind or co-ordinating muscle to keep all the strands together. Without this, partners tend to do their own thing and work in parallel streams, leading to fragmentation rather than integration – even with the best will in the world.”

Akwal Sunner, innovation and technology strategy expert at PA, adds that programmes driven by only one of the three helix partners, or which lack a system for coordination, “systematically struggle to deliver the economic impacts they are designed to”.

He says an empowered triple helix model “becomes the enabling mechanism that helps to align governance, investment and impact – giving the umbrella vision for everyone to buy into and drives that collective effort”.

The power of combined strengths

The government believes that innovation-led regional growth is more likely to be successful under the triple helix model where, as Sunner sets out, each strand plays a distinct role – but is coordinated as a collective.

As he explains, industry understands the commercial viability of innovation to market; academia provides the research, has expertise in applied intellectual property, develops the pipelines of in-demand skills, and works to translate theory into practice; and the public sector applies placed-based strategy and can bring legitimacy and governance to the helix.

Effective collaboration can see universities giving lab space to industry or industry inviting academics into product testing facilities, the creation of centres of excellence that become test beds for new technology, and the convening of communities of practice.

“Another example of why this fund is attractive is because of how much it costs to do product testing,” Boe says. “Time-to-market and speed of development in emerging technology is highly risky and expensive – the fund is another way to incentivise more and better testing by bringing these different players together.”

Rooted in reality

The government “is very clear that they don’t want to invest in blue sky concepts” through the LIPF, Boe says. “The goal isn’t to deliver foundational research and something that’s never been done before – it’s very much about accelerating that near-to-value, near-to-market journey”.

Sunner adds that the government is “being quite prescriptive” and offering those bidding for funding examples of the kinds of activities that are likely to drive the intended outcomes, if well executed.

He points to defence – where the UK is keen to be ahead of the curve in developing related technologies and which is undergoing major reform in response to recent geopolitical events – as a sector primed for investment through the LIPF.

Plymouth, for example, stands at the forefront of the UK’s maritime innovation off the back of its large naval base and collaboration between business, academia and government. Local partners are working to tap into the global marine autonomy market, which is projected to reach £103bn by 2030, and the innovation projects underway have the potential to benefit not just defence, but the energy, water, and logistics markets among others.

Regulation and the barriers to realising economic potential

Sunner explains that UK Research and Innovation has been clear that the LIPF is about first identifying priority cluster areas and then diagnosing what is preventing those clusters from scaling or competing at the international level.

“The question becomes ‘What is stopping the cluster from realising its economic potential?’ not ‘What project do we want to run?’, he says.

And here too, the different perspectives of the three types of partner can be helpful. Businesses have experience of market failures, know where innovation is not reaching customers, and have an understanding of where the scale-up of finances or procurement is being blocked; universities know where the applied research is strong but under-commercialised; and the public sector can see where investment isn’t reaching the right areas and where place-based strategy is not aligned to innovation capacity or activity.

The identification of, and efforts to fill, regulatory gaps that can limit innovation is another benefit of the three groups of partners working together.

PA has looked into the barriers between initial concept and a product or service being market ready, and regulation is one of them.

“That’s a really interesting one,” Boe says. “There’s a limit [to how often or to what degree] these different players come together in a specific, emerging technology area and so they might only realise what the regulatory barriers are when they come together.” And, if they could not see the regulatory barriers beforehand, then the government probably doesn’t know about them either, he adds.

“By bringing these different players together, they can potentially inform what regulatory change could happen or create test beds for how regulatory change could affect an industry’s growth.”

Monitoring and evaluation

What will be crucial in programmes driven by the LIPF is continual monitoring and evaluation to ensure the fund is delivering the intended outcomes – not least return on investment and economic growth.

UKRI’s guidance on the LIPF and the criteria for measuring core outcomes focuses on increased productivity, the investment attracted, the creation of high-value jobs, and converting research into near-market opportunities – all things that tie in with the UK government’s overarching objectives.

Boe expands on this. “If you think about the overall impact, it comes down to two things. One is local economic growth, and that can be measured by things like job creation or gross value added (GVA). Then there’s the international competitiveness side of things, which can be measured by how many net new companies are moving to the region or how much private sector investment is being leveraged in addition to the LIPF funding.

“In terms of the long-term impact, there’s also time-to-market and how much more quickly products are being developed and commercialised, and what the resulting revenue is. And there’s a sustainability angle to this in terms of longevity – so another proof point will be the governance structures, relationships and conversations that endure beyond [the fund’s] five-year funding call.”

Progress reviews will play an important part of the governance function holding the partners together, ensuring that investment is being driven to the right areas, encouraging accountability, and helping to identify the right metrics to support on-going decision-making.

“You need to apply the right interventions at the right times, particularly if the indicators show that elements [of the programme] are lagging or stalling,” Sunner emphasises.

A look to the future

While the aim of the LIPF and other innovation programmes with the triple helix model at their heart is for partnerships and results to endure, the shape of those partnerships and the projects they’re driving may change over time.

Sunner says the future is probably “fewer but stronger” – where you might not have as many partners on board in five or 10 years’ time, but the ones that are there will be there for the long haul.

Sunner also highlights that the LIPF is an enabler that will drive the maturity of certain innovations and portfolios, and that “further catalysts” will follow on afterwards.

“Demonstrating success in one funding channel sometimes opens doors to others because it becomes a tried and tested model,” he says, adding that the “private-to-public investment leverage must come across the lifespan of the portfolio. It’s not just an upfront thing. The public funding is arguably the catalyst, but it’s not sustaining”.

The LIPF is at an early stage with regional leaders still in the process of bidding for funding. The government’s ambitions for quickening the journey of market-impacting innovation are lofty – but by embracing the triple helix model, there is strong potential for sustaining growth through the programme and beyond.

Leo Boe, innovation and investment strategy expert, PA Consulting
Leo works with C-suite clients globally to help them make investment decisions to adopt emerging technology, including AI, to deliver better products and services to customers and citizens. Leo has worked in UK and overseas research, development and innovation ecosystems for over 15 years in the public and private sector.

Akwal Sunner, innovation and technology strategy expert, PA Consulting
Akwal partners with senior leaders across the public and private sectors to deliver complex transformation and technology programmes. With a PhD in innovation ecosystem strategy and over six years of experience, Akwal specialises in solving challenging systems integration issues, guiding clients through organisational change, and enabling the successful adoption of new technologies. As a trusted adviser to executive teams, Akwal helps clients realise the full value of innovation and digital transformation.