Innovation policy is often judged by whether it generates growth, investment or jobs. Those things matter, but they do not tell us enough about the wider societal impact. If governments want innovation to support healthier and more productive places, they need tools that can measure participation, opportunity and well-being alongside economic performance.
Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra, Associate Professor of Political Economy and Entrepreneurship at King’s Business School
04 June 2026
Does Belfast hold the key to measuring whether innovation improves people's lives?
New white paper argues that cities need better ways to measure whether innovation is creating healthier and more productive societies.
Belfast could become a model for how cities measure whether innovation is improving people’s lives, according to a new white paper co-authored by King’s Business School.
It argues that governments often judge innovation through economic measures such as GDP, patents, or new firms or jobs created. While these indicators remain important, they do not reveal the extent to which the benefits of innovation are being shared across communities, or whether people are healthier, more secure and more able to participate in economic and social life.
Using Belfast as a case study, the authors argue that cities need to be clearer about what progress means in practice. Innovation City Belfast has set an ambition for the city to become the healthiest and most productive city in the UK by 2035. But the authors say that achieving this goal requires assessing more than economic growth. It requires a way to comprehensively measure innovation’s impact on health, well-being and economic performance.
The paper is authored by Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra (King’s Business School), Adrian Johnston (Innovation City Belfast) and Alex Glennie, independent researcher and organisational consultant.
They propose an “inclusion capital” framework to help policymakers understand the range of indicators that capture whether individuals and communities to contribute to, and benefit from, economic and social systems. This includes health and wellbeing, access to high value-added jobs and entrepreneurship, education and skills, social mobility, and the wider social and cultural conditions that allow prosperity to be shared.
The paper highlights Belfast’s ambition as a significant opportunity. The Belfast Agenda commits the city to inclusive growth, better jobs, improved training and employment opportunities, reduced inequalities and action on poverty. The authors emphasize that these goals can only be properly tracked if data on health, employment, education, innovation and social mobility is brought together in a more holistic way.
Over a quarter (26.7%) of Northern Ireland’s working population is economically inactive, compared with a UK average of just over a fifth (20.8%).
Speaking of the need to get measurement right, Adrian Johnston, Innovation Commissioner for Innovation City Belfast, said:
“Belfast has a real opportunity to show how inclusive innovation can be measured in practice. The city has strong partnerships across government, academia, business and the community, but we need to be clear about what success looks like and how we know whether we are achieving it.”
The paper says cities first need to agree what “healthy and productive” means in practice. Once this is agreed, then they can identify the right measures, bring together data from across public bodies and partner organisations, and create a clear starting point to track progress over time.
The authors argue that the city or region that gets this right could offer a model for others around the world. By measuring the wider impact of innovation, policymakers would be better able to allocate resources, design more effective policies and build places that are economically dynamic, healthy, inclusive and resilient.
Read the full white paper: Measuring the ‘unmeasurable’: Inclusion capital white paper.
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