Investing for innovation

Abstract

The Invest to Save Budget is a kind of venture capital fund designed to support innovative activity based on partnership working across the public and voluntary sectors. It has been operating since 1998 and now has sufficient evidence of innovation projects to start drawing out generic lessons about the success and failure of innovation projects within the public sector. This paper explains the aims of the initiative, the workings of the fund, and identifies the broad lessons learned so far for innovation, sustainability and dissemination/rollout of successful projects.