We have Leicestershire’s innovation story - we just stopped telling it

Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland Innovation Advisory Group formed in 2025 under the Business Board.

It followed the closure of the LLEP - and the Advisory Group swiftly commissioned a regional innovation audit.

That report was presented to Group members earlier this month. It identifies six common characteristics of successful innovation ecosystems.

The first is that aspiration and a bold vision are fundamental.

“A unique identity and brand helps communicate the ecosystem value proposition for businesses and people,” reads the report.

“It provides a way to define near-and long-term success measures to keep on track.”

That brand already exists.

‍Creating a narrative

Back in late 2022, the then LLEP Innovation Board set a challenge for 1284 Communications.

The LLEP had already:

• completed the MIT REAP programme
• formed an Innovation Board
• drafted an Innovation Strategy.

It had a 10-point delivery framework, all geared towards a clear objective: to use innovation as a means of growing the local economy at a rate of 5-10% ahead of the national average.

‍So a pretty complete package - and one that was starting to be recognised nationally.

Then, as now, local leaders recognised that a narrative was required to move the project forward. To knit all the various threads together.

1284 recommended creation of an overarching brand and brochure website. This would enable contextualisation of everything that was going on within regional and national growth plans. 

The Board agreed and 1284 set to work.

What was achieved

Innovative Leicestershire launched in 2023 to do exactly what the audit now says is missing.

The brand gives a single identity to a defined regional ecosystem of disparate partners, pillars, institutions, projects, events and people. 

It tells a story in one voice - inside and outside the region.

And it’s still there today.

From a marketing point of view, activity under the brand was gearing up when the LLEP dissolved in 2024:

• Thousands of engagement touchpoints through a series of annual Innovation Festivals
• Hundreds of nominations received over 5 years of Innovation Awards
• Attracting keynotes from the likes of the CEO of Innovate UK and the Chair of the Federation of Small Businesses
• The LEP Network, Innovate UK, Government and others recognising the work being done
• Dozens of sector-specific events under a recognised regional innovation brand.

As ever with content marketing, the agenda and the activity were suddenly becoming ‘a thing’ by virtue of the fact that the agenda now had a name, a logo, and a website.

So what next?

The recent consultancy report makes the point that there is an opportunity in Local Government Reorganisation (LGR). 

It states: “The forthcoming transition to two unitary authorities creates an opportunity to address one of the ecosystem's key weaknesses: the absence of a shared innovation vision.

“Stronger strategic leadership could help align major assets around a more coherent innovation proposition for LLR.”

I would suggest that the focus should be on the opportunity of Devolution - particularly with the ongoing uncertainty about LGR in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

Speaking at the recent Competing To Win summit, speakers including Business Board chair Andy Reed OBE and city council Director of Tourism Culture and Economy, Peter Chandler, were clear about where the opportunity lies - and what needs to be done to capitalise upon it.

Mr Reed, opening the Universities Partnership-led event, said: “The reality is we need to work really hard, particularly over this next period, to make sure that we're telling our story and we're telling it to the right decision makers. 

“They're not watching the minutiae - they're just gauging our confidence and our ability to tell our story and be really clear about who we are, what we are, and what we can achieve.”

Later the same day, Prof. Harris Beider, founder of the Forward Institute, warned against copying the narratives being formed by established devolved areas such as Birmingham and Manchester. 

Instead, LLR should look to build from its own “unique, diverse, hyper connected internal fabric”, he added.

Innovative Leicestershire presents a useful tool to do that. 

And it’s a tool already in the kitbag of those tasked with creating a USP for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland while making the case for an accelerated devolution.

Summary

I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel. We operate in straitened times. We can instead look to refresh and build assets which already exist.

It’s a route to getting the Chancellor making more references about innovation in Leicester - as he did in his Growth Speech at the MTC earlier this month.

1284 has since seen from the Devolution Leicestershire campaign how simply producing a flow of optimised reporting enables interested parties in local and central government (as well as media) to easily draw examples they need to support the central agenda.

It’s the kind of content that ends up on Government websites, as case studies in ALMO impact reports, and being circulated through the networks of stakeholders.

‍And that’s the kind confidence-barometer described by Mr Reed.

The momentum went out of the Innovative Leicestershire brand when the LLEP closed.

But the brand itself remains - and so does its website.

Both simply need realigning against the updated innovation strategy as it emerges under the Business Board.

And that’s a handy asset to have up your sleeve at a time of Devolution in negotiation with a Government looking to tell the story of UK economic growth.