What is the State of The Art (SOTA)?
We are working in an increasingly fast-paced world in which more and more information is becoming available from multiple sources. For many of us, this situation makes it difficult to keep on top of complex issues and debates and identify trustworthy and reliable information. To help, the Enterprise Research Centre is today launching a new publication series called the ERC ‘State of the Art’ or ‘SOTA’ Reviews. You can find the first five SOTA Reviews here.
Introducing the Enterprise Research Centre’s new ‘SOTA’ Reviews
At the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) our experience of working closely with policy makers and practitioners has shown that there is a growing need for high quality syntheses of the existing knowledge base. We refer to this as ‘knowledge curation’.
A recent consultation exercise with our stakeholders also emphasised the value of shorter, focussed and accessible evidence reviews bringing together existing knowledge on a specific point.
Each ERC SOTA Review provides a short (1200-1500 word) briefing on a tightly-defined topic, drawing on the most recent research and policy literature. The reviews clearly summarise the main evidence points, provide an indication of robustness for each evidence point and identify key uncertainties and evidence gaps. They provide references and hyperlinks to relevant material to enable easy follow-up as required.
Written by international experts
SOTA Reviews are written by international experts in their field are sometimes accompanied by follow-up policy workshops to explore issues in more depth.
The first five SOTA Reviews are now available on the ERC’s website www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk
These focus on themes that have been identified as important by policy-makers: The relationship between innovation and quality management; SMEs that do not apply for finance for fear of rejection, or ‘discouraged borrowers’; attracting and retaining internationally mobile R&D; organisational learning and innovation in supply chains; and what can be done to support the adoption of innovation.
We hope that the SOTA reviews will help to strengthen the evidence base upon which enterprise policy-makers can make decisions and allocate resources, as well as being useful for researchers and students.
Can you contribute a SOTA Review?
We will be publishing a series of SOTA Reviews over the next couple of years. If you would like to contribute to the series or have a suggestion for a topic for a future ERC SOTA Review, please get in touch (centremanager@enterpriseresearch.ac.uk). We pay a small honorarium for each Review we publish.
Vicki Belt
Please note that the views expressed in this blog belong to the individual blogger and do not represent the official view of
the Enterprise Research Centre, its Funders or Advisory Group.
