Nesta is the UK’s innovation foundation with a mission to help people and organisations bring great ideas to life. Dedicated to supporting great ideas that can help improve lives, Nesta combines a number of roles. These range from early stage investment to funding practical programmes, supporting innovation skills and doing in-depth research. Nesta also run a range of EU wide programmes with partners across Europe.
They believe that we need a more experimental approach to innovation, entrepreneurship and growth policy, trialling new instruments but also evaluating them more rigorously. This involves making much more use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), learning from successful experiences in other fields. Nesta’s Creative Credits was one of the first innovation policy RCTs, and they want to help extend this practice globally. This is why Nesta has led the development of IGL, a global laboratory for innovation and growth policy.