David Connell

Senior Research Associate, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge

David Connell is a Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Judge Business School, Centre for Business Research. His research focuses on UK innovation policy, start up and growth strategies for STEM based companies, and role model innovation policies in other countries.

David’s research builds on a 30 year career working with science and technology companies from start-ups to multinationals, as a director or senior executive, cofounder, investor and consultant. He has made major contributions to UK innovation and industry policy, including authoring or co-authoring major policy reviews for Theresa May, Margaret Thatcher, Ed Miliband and George Osborne. He is architect of the UK Small Business Research Initiative.

David’s most recent contributions include

Leveraging Procurement to Grow the Innovation Economy

An independent Review of SBRI and other procurement-based innovation policies for Prime Minister Theresa May

Is the UK’s Flagship Industrial Policy a Costly Failure?

An independent review of R&D tax credits cited by Rishi Sunak in his 2022 MAIS lecture prior to his reforms of the programme.

Proposal for an Independent “UK Office for Innovation and Industrial Strategy”

Submission to the House of Commons Select Committee for Science and Technology written at the request of the Chairman.

Selling less of the family silver:

Better UK innovation and industrial policies for economic growth

David Connell and Bobby reddy
July 2024

Other recent work focuses on the growth in early trade sales of the UK’s most promising, VC backed STEM start-ups to foreign multinationals and the challenges this presents for innovation and industrial policy.