Tag Archives: innovation ecosystem

Cyber, Growth, and Regional Futures: A Comparative Synthesis of Six 2025 Reports: From Fragmentation to Framework

2025 has been a year of noise, policy papers, strategies, and growth plans, each declaring the next leap for UK cyber and regional innovation. But noise isn’t movement. Across six flagship reports, DSIT’s Cyber Growth Action Plan, WMCA’s Futures and Growth Plans, the Tech Nation 2025 report, the Midlands Engine Cyber & Defence report, and DSIT’s Cyber Skills 2025, the pattern repeats: good intent, weak execution, no continuity. Together, they map £77 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA), 143,000 cyber professionals, and £17 billion in projected uplift, but no coherent operating model. This paper builds one: treating cyber as economic infrastructure and the West Midlands as the proof-of-concept for a practitioner-led, resilient growth framework.

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The West Midlands Growth Plan 2025: Blueprint or Turning Point?

The West Midlands Growth Plan 2025 is the most detailed and credible regional strategy in a decade, a £17.4 billion growth blueprint built on data, pragmatism, and belief in place-based delivery. It models a region that can finally close its £5-per-hour productivity gap and turn polycentric geography into economic strength. Yet it still risks the same fate as its predecessors: ambition without execution. My critique goes beyond the press releases, exposing funding silos, institutional churn, and the absence of practitioner leadership, and proposes a hard-edged, engineer’s roadmap for delivery. Cyber must be treated as infrastructure; innovation must be systemic, not decorative; and governance must have teeth. The call is simple: stop admiring the plan and start engineering the outcome. Continuity, accountability, and practitioner leadership; the rest is noise.

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Stakeholder Grid Example 3: WM CWG & West Midlands Cyber Ecosystem

The West Midlands Cyber Working Group (WM CWG) plays a pivotal role in uniting industry, academia, government, and grassroots cyber communities across the region. This article outlines how WM CWG applies stakeholder mapping to guide its coordination efforts, balancing the interests of funders, civic authorities, partners, and community actors.

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A Critical History of Techstars and the Evolution of the Accelerator Model

This article traces the emergence of Techstars within the broader history of startup accelerators, examining its strategic differences from Y Combinator, its influence on regional and vertical innovation models, and its role as an institutional entrepreneur in shaping the global accelerator movement. It analyses the evolution from incubators to modern accelerators and critically reflects on Techstars’ legacy in ecosystem building and innovation finance.

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