Callaghan Innovation receives woeful ratings

Dave Guerin at Education Directions summarised the recent Performance Improvement Framework report for Callaghan Innovation:

The Callaghan Innovation PIF report (62 pages) was dated Dec 2016.

• 4 substantive ratings are possible in initial PIF reports. 19/24 of Callaghan Innovation’s ratings were Needing Development, the second worst. 4 were Well Placed and 1 was Weak.
• The organisation operates, in many ways, alongside the tertiary education sector, as it has a primary focus on supporting firm growth in high value manufacturing and services (mostly by giving out grants and advice to firms).

NBR also reports:

A review of the government’s flagship agency for commercialising innovation has found Callaghan Innovation has “weak” management, and is “struggling internally” to complete a strategy guiding how it offers services to companies with high-value, high-tech commercial ideas.

Many of the comments on the NBR article are quite scathing. This reinforces my suspicion that the best thing the Government can do to help innovation is get out of the way, rather than do partnerships and hand out grants.