How does the North win?

The relative underperformance of North England’s economy is a mystery…….but…

What would it mean for North England to win?

This blog is my attempt to articulate a concept that we have been trying out over the past year - namely “How Does North England Win?”. It also introduces our Economic Data Conference and get together, which will be on the 20th March 2024 at Arup’s amazing new offices near the train station in Leeds.

Defining success as ‘winning’ for ourselves, on our own terms, has already been useful for us so that we have positive, forward looking conversations and provides us with important boundaries and targets to direct our work.

This is what the conference will be all about - working on what ‘winning’ means, working out how to measure that and sharing examples of what has worked elsewhere and what could work for North England now.

Who are we and why do we care?

Open Innovations does mission led open innovation with data, you can find out all about what we do at our website - https://open-innovations.org/ .

We have worked for ten years from our base in Leeds and have evolved into what we are today:

“A not for profit, independent, mission-led, radically open organisation, that works UK-wide from its base in Leeds. We work in the open with our sponsors, companies, organisations, governments and individuals to use data to innovate and help people make better decisions. We help you to innovate with data – to use the web as it was intended – and create massive surpluses of shared value.”

We have seen a lot over those ten years and I wrote up what we are doing next with this invested knowledge here - https://open-innovations.org/blog/2023-06-21-open-innovations .

New Institutions: Data & The North - We knew instinctively in 2013 that we needed new institutions and new institutional thinking to deal with the emerging world of the web of data. Our opinion and work on the ways that economic devolution can help North England compete effectively as an economy has evolved with our work over the past 10 years.The development of a set of perspectives, views and opinions that have significant reach and influence on what should be done to make things better for North England is perhaps our greatest achievement.

That these opinions are tested with real, high quality and credible data, with our sponsors and partners with real-time feedback from our business operations and spin-out and scale up businesses gives them a veracity that is compelling and far reaching.

We have seen so many national interventions, organisations and institutions fail in their attempts to do anything meaningful in North England.

So this is our contribution- an open development of optimistic, positive actions using high quality data - to help North England Win!

Winning?

We are deliberately using the language of winning. There are three reasons for this

• It forces us to define what winning on our own terms means.
• If North England wins economically UK plc wins economically - very simply put, North England underperforms when compared with its equivalent places in comparable countries - it’s a win win - you can read more about this on these links -
• https://www.ft.com/content/518dd3ba-a52a-41ac-aab6-8f011a6f9717
• Path to greater national prosperity runs through Britain’s ‘twin second cities’
• https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/so-you-want-to-level-up/what-is-the-problem/
• https://www.tomforth.co.uk/northernlands/
• London - we can’t ignore the centralised nature of the UK but we can do work which isn’t deflected or dismissed with simplistic arguments about London losing, or that we should conveniently forget about all the in-built advantages that London has been allowed to accrue, but most importantly if we win it means we have to be better at doing what needs to be done to help make that happen. This raised expectation of ourselves is as important as pointing out that centralisation hasn’t helped.

Winning on our own terms

When we use the word win it allows us to be positive, optimistic and look forward. Winning also means we have to raise our expectations of ourselves and what we need to do to make a difference.

The concept of winning can be looked at through many lenses and has been deliberately chosen by us because it forces us to decide what needs to happen, what metrics are useful, and also articulate what winning looks like.

Knowing what winning looks like also means that we can be honest with ourselves when we lose and our part in that.

What next?

Well, we have already started by using the language of winning in our work and it definitely changes the discourse and expectations of people and organisations.

We have built data infrastructure to let us look at the economy in all its facets across North England through different lenses - examples of tools built on top of our common data infrastructure are:

• Poverty https://open-innovations.github.io/jrf-insight/
• Young People & The Economy https://data.youthfuturesfoundation.org/
• Skills https://lsip-data.wnychamber.co.uk/
• Inclusive Growth https://open-innovations.shinyapps.io/leeds-inclusive-growth/
• Culture https://data.leeds2023.co.uk

https://open-innovations.github.io/leeds-schools-cultural-engagement/reports/organisations/

• Politics https://constituencies.open-innovations.org/
• Population & Infrastructure https://open-innovations.github.io/population-calculator/

We are hosting a data & impact conference and reception next year on 20th March at Arup’s brand new Offices to work on all the questions that flow from the big question of How Does North England Win. We are grateful to be supported by Arup, Brabners & The Data City.

Watch this space for more details and get in touch if you want to know more hello@open-innovations.org.

Here’s to winning in 2024.