Skills for Sustainable Innovation: A Competency Framework for Inclusive Innovation Informing Policy in a Regional Economy

Innovation is widely recognised as a key driver of economic growth, social well-being, and environmental sustainability. Inclusive innovation is the process of developing and implementing new solutions that address the needs and aspirations of a broad range of stakeholders, especially those who are marginalised or underserved (George et al., 2012; Adams et al.,2016). The global pandemic has impacted billions of lives across the world and has revealed and worsened the social and economic inequalities that have emerged over the past several decades. Addressing inequality is the first step towards sustainability (Ashford et al.,2020); and innovation is increasingly needed to address rising inequality. ‘Unless we see meaningful intervention by the government or business community, a widening inequality gap is likely to get worse’ (World Economic Forum, 2023). Recent developments in Education for Sustainable Development (Brennan and Sabogal-Paz, 2023) have highlighted the significance of transdisciplinary approaches to producing and circulating knowledge, as well as transforming higher education for global sustainability (Parr et al. 2022).
This paper introduces the Innovation Competency Framework for Inclusive Innovation (ICF) research project which was commissioned by the Department for the Economy (DfE) and addresses the need for a greater understanding of sustainable innovation by businesses in Northern Ireland. The research provides a greater understanding of the innovation skills landscape through a review of emerging international innovation competency frameworks through collaboration with ISO (Tidd, 2021; Davey and Brennan., 2022) and the views of key regional stakeholders. Additionally, this work supports the priorities in the Innovate UK (UKRI, 2022) report on Net Zero and the need for innovation skills development.
The methodology involved a stakeholder engagement process, consisting of interviews, and workshops, to elicit the perspectives of representatives from academia, industry, government, and civil society in Northern Ireland.
This research highlighting the importance of sustainable approaches offers a novel and holistic perspective on innovation competencies, which integrates technical, humanistic, and critical dimensions, and emphasises the importance of inclusivity, diversity, and ethics in innovation.
The project represents a significant step towards establishing a shared vision and language for innovation competencies in Northern Ireland and creating a culture of inclusive innovation that benefits all segments of society. Globally, major initiatives are underway to develop and deploy technology-based solutions to climate change (UKRI, 2022), this research highlights the importance of fundamentally changing the international innovation skills landscape to develop human-centric innovation skills urgently needed to ensure we have the people and solutions we need now, and those we will need in the future, to secure a prosperous and efficient transition to net zero.