From programmes to capability: building a more connected innovation ecosystem for offshore wind

Assuming the role of Chair of the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Hub Industry Advisory Board has made me reflect on something I have seen from several sides of the offshore wind sector. The UK has an impressive range of research, innovation and business support programmes. The opportunity now is not simply to create more, but to connect what we already have around the industrial capabilities we want to build.

I would encourage anyone working in research, innovation, product and service development, business support, investment or deployment to think about how our own work fits into a wider system.

Some organisations already do this extremely well. Supergen is one example. Another, from my own experience, was the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account at Durham University.

The strongest projects were ones co-developed between academia and industry, often with secondments in both directions, drawing on existing research and working closely with an industry partner to develop it towards a product or service.

That interaction matters because good innovation is rarely a handover.

Earlier in my career I worked in product development within manufacturing, where good new product introduction was collaborative and iterative. I have since seen the same from the other direction while supporting companies through Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult programmes. There is no single route to market. Innovation can begin with research, but it can just as easily start with a customer need, a manufacturing challenge or an opportunity to improve an existing product.

Yet we still tend to describe the journey as research, development, demonstration, commercialisation and deployment. The reality is messier, and there is more than one gap to bridge.

We often talk about the technology readiness level “valley of death”, where promising research struggles to move into demonstration and commercial application. But there is another challenge further along that journey. A small company can have a technically proven product and clear market opportunity yet still lack the financial capacity or resources to deploy at the scale offshore wind requires. Proving that something works is not the same as being able to deliver it on an industrial level.

This is why understanding the wider ecosystem and the roles which different organisations play within it is really important.

Take the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership (OWGP) as an example. It works directly with supply chain companies to provide targeted funding and business support on projects that are typically mid-late stage TRL. To date it has supported over 400 projects and helped to develop 248 new products and services for the offshore wind market.

The Crown Estate intervenes differently, with a £50 million Supply Chain Accelerator supporting early-stage project development and up to £350 million of capital for port and supply chain infrastructure. Those are different interventions solving different problems, and that is precisely the point.

In practice, businesses tend to move through this ecosystem in different ways. Support may come from more than one source at once, or at distinct points as a company moves from technical validation towards commercial viability.

Kinewell's journey is a useful example of how to navigate this ecosystem. Academic research involving Durham University and ORE Catapult developed into commercial technology, followed by further Catapult support, close industry engagement and, more recently, OWGP development funding. The company has gone on to grow revenues, develop export markets and secure major industry customers, while continuing to work across those parts of the ecosystem.

We need more of that conversion. A successful innovation ecosystem should not only generate a high volume of research and early innovation activity. It should increase the proportion that makes the journey through to commercial products and services, growing businesses and, ultimately, lasting industrial capability.

That also means being prepared to change where organisations focus as the landscape evolves. The Wind Innovation Hub is now establishing a stronger focal point for aligning offshore wind R&D and innovation priorities and supporting technologies towards industrial deployment. As that capability develops, organisations such as OWGP can increasingly focus further along the journey, where commercialisation and business growth support may add most value. The Crown Estate can intervene differently again, supporting project development and ultimately larger scale capital investment.

A connected ecosystem does not mean everybody doing everything. It means organisations understanding where they add most value, being prepared to adapt as gaps are filled elsewhere and making sure the interfaces between them work.

We can see the same direction of travel within UKRI. Its new strategy deliberately connects curiosity-driven research, strategic Priority Programmes and support for companies to start, scale and stay in the UK, recognising that pathways from discovery to commercial growth are not linear. Its latest delivery plan also includes both a new Offshore Wind R&I programme and a pilot focused specifically on scaling high-potential clean energy businesses.

None of this means all research should become industry-led. Blue-sky and curiosity-driven research remains essential. The opportunity is to build stronger connections around it.

A small group of organisations is already working towards this in offshore wind, and over time there will be opportunities to connect that work more widely. For now, the useful challenge for anyone working in this space is to take the thought back into your own work.

Who sits before you and after you in the journey? Who are you not speaking to? Where are unnecessary handovers being created? And are we optimising individual programmes, or helping to build the capability the whole sector needs?

We have made a good start. The opportunity now is to make the whole system work better together.