Biography
Luke is Vice-President for Research and Innovation at the University of Manchester and Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at Manchester Business School. He has been on the staff of its precursor institute, PREST, since 1977 and was its Executive Director from 1990-2004. He is responsible for the University’s research strategy and its implementation and for business engagement and commercialisation activities. He continues to be active in research and policy advice to governments and business.
He has chaired several international panels examining research and innovation issues including acting as rapporteur for the influential report to European leaders, Creating an Innovative Europe which put demand-side innovation policy onto the political agenda, and as Chairman of the High-level Expert Group on Rationales for the European Research Area which recommended a refocusing of European research and innovation support on a series of grand challenges. In the UK he was a member of the Glover committee which reported to the Treasury and BIS on access to public procurement by SMEs and chaired its expert sub-group. He was for 6 years an elected member of the Board of Governors of the University of Manchester and for 10 a member of the Board of Directors of Manchester Science Park Limited. He is on the editorial board of eight journals and has published extensively in leading outlets including Science and Nature.
Research Interests
Luke's research interests include evaluation of R&D and innovation policy, foresight, national and international science policy, and management of science and technology. Recent projects include several studies of industry-science relations, policy for international scientific co-operation, evaluation of foresight, public procurement for innovation and changes in public sector research institutions.
Foresight
In the area of foresight his principal interests include tracking the emergence of foresight as a phenomenon and evaluating its impact upon policy. He has argued that foresight has developed through a series of ideal types characterised as 1st to 5th generations. Results of his most recent project are at http://farhorizon.portals.mbs.ac.uk/
Evaluation
Work on evaluation of R&D and innovation dates back to the first OECD review of the topic in 1985 and the evaluation of the UK's Alvey Programme for Advanced Information Technology in the 1980s in which the team established many of the practices still used in current evaluations. He continues to work on the concept of behavioural additionality which he co-invented.
Innovation Policy and Management
Work on innovation policy has recently focused on demand-side actions, including the use of public procurement to stimulate innovation and measures to stimulate lead markets. This work has been carried out both at European level and in the UK in partnership with NESTA. He is currently working with Jakob Edler on their ESRC project Understanding Public Procurement of Innovation http://underpinn.portals.mbs.ac.uk/
Science Policy and Management
In science policy, current interests include the development of a friendly ecology for research in Europe, and specific topics including international cooperation in research, science in developing countries and science parks.