Productivity Research Conference  4th – 5th September 2025 Find out more

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The Institute’s key research themes are led by ten academic partners spread across the UK.

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We’re a UK-wide research organisation exploring what productivity means for business

Businesses are crucial to solving the UK’s productivity problems.

Skills, Innovation, and Productivity: Further Education Colleges and Place

Skills, Innovation, and Productivity: Further Education Colleges and Place. Productivity Puzzles Season 2, Episode 3  was released on Thursday, 16 March 2023

How do Further Education Colleges contribute to the provision of skills needed for innovation and productivity in regions, cities and towns? How do they identify what businesses need, and how do they work with firms, local government and other schools? This episode of Productivity Puzzles focuses on the findings of a summary report commissioned by The Productivity Institute and supported by the Gatsby Foundation.

Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by:

  • Jen Nelles, Senior Research Fellow with the Innovation Caucus and co-director of the Oxford Regions, Innovation, and Enterprise Lab (ORIEL) at Oxford Brookes Business School.
  • Ben Verinder, Founder and Managing Director of Chalkstream Ltd.

For more information on the topic:

To catch up with past episodes:

About Productivity Puzzles

Productivity Puzzles is brought to you by The Productivity Institute, a research body involving nine academic institutions across the UK, eight Regional Productivity Forums throughout the nation, and a national independent Productivity Commission to advise policy makers at all levels of government. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

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