Innovation Places Leadership Academy 

Innovation is a powerful driver of economic prosperity and regional renewal, generating jobs, investment and opportunity. Realising these benefits requires sustained collaboration and a sense of shared endeavour between local partners. This collaborative leadership practice is an emerging art and a focus for our work at Connected Places Catapult. 

The Innovation Places Leadership Academy (IPLA) is a facilitated programme of coaching and peer-learning leveraging on our extensive knowledge and networks to empower potential-rich places and their leaders. Through this programme, we aim to equip a growing network of place leaders to drive innovation-led prosperity across the nation. 

Innovation-led localised devolution requires whole place collaboration, cohorts include representatives from the public, private and academic sector in each place that takes part.   

Empowered Place Leadership is an essential ingredient for innovation-led prosperity  

We launched ‘A Roadmap to Innovation-led Prosperity’, with an ambitious approach to leadership, strategy and investment key to enabling innovation-led prosperity in UK’s largest cities. This work received the following endorsements from RSA, and Core Cities. Read here.

“There needs to be a transformation in local capacity and capability for delivery of the local prosperity plan. To achieve this, and working across the public, private and civil society sectors, we need to develop an urban leadership academy to nurture a pipeline of local leadership and talent.” 

Urban Future Commission, RSA & Core Cities

The Innovation Place Leadership Academy is a facilitated programme of coaching and action learning designed to help you lead your town, city or region towards having a thriving innovation economy.

Benefits of the IPLA programme:

• Deeper understanding: All participants in cohort 1 said that as a result of being part of the Academy, they gained a better understanding of how place leadership can drive innovation and economic development in their region.  
• Skills for collaboration: All participants reported having grown in confidence collaborating with local stakeholders, peer cities, and international players after their involvement.  
• Action-oriented development: More than half of participants had already taken practical actions to make a difference in their organisations and places, inspired by their experiences in the Academy. 

Here to help the place sector rise to the moment    

Connected Places Catapult has a strong track record of partnering with regions to bring local partners together, unlock investment, and catalyse innovation. Our expertise is grounded in intelligence from around the world, and we have the resources to support your journey towards becoming a thriving hub of sustainable growth and prosperity. 

From the Belfast City Region to the UK Innovation Districts Network, Connected Places Catapult has a wealth of experience of partnering with places to bring local partners together around shared plans to unlock investment and catalyse new innovation activity. 

The Innovation Places Leadership Academy draws on our extensive knowledge and networks to resource places of potential and the people that lead them. 

Our global review of innovation places and an accompanying Playbook for Place leaders draws on insights from 700 cities, more than 30 globally recognised innovation clusters and over 100 UK innovation locations. This knowledge base is a vital tool for leaders seeking to foster new economic prosperity in their areas.  

Since then, we have also generated a data tool which draws on 25,000 data points from about 500 cities across the UK and worldwide, including more than 2,800 global performance benchmarks. This tool helps to identify cohorts of peers from which places can learn.   We also partnered with places to apply these insights and our wider expertise on a commercial basis. Given the pressing need for economic renewal in the wake of Covid and other global trends, we wanted to find a way to support more places on their journey to becoming thriving hubs of sustainable growth and prosperity.    

Download the Roadmap to Innovation-led Prosperity, a three-part report integrating insights from the innovation places knowledge base, the Innovation Places Leadership Academy pilot cohort, and original dialogue with public and private sector leaders in the UK Core Cities. 

Visit our Place Leadership Hub for more about our resources and services.  Learn more about Innovation Places.

Project

Innovation Places Leadership Academy - Cohort 1

The first Innovation Places Leadership Academy cohort ran from October 2021 to July 2023 with leaders from Aberdeen, Portsmouth and Hull.

Project

Innovation Places Leadership Academy - Cohort 2

Building on the success of our pilot with leaders from Aberdeen, Portsmouth and Hull, the second IPLA cohort began in April 2024 with a focus on enhancing investment in regional innovation and infrastructure in selected UK city regions.