The All-Wales Academy for Innovation in Health and Social Care Tom James 1 , Roderick Thomas 2 , Daniel Rees 2 and Gareth Davies 2 1 Welsh Government, Wales, UK 2 School of Management, Swansea University, Wales, UK Thomas.james@gov.wales Roderick.thomas@swansea.ac.uk D.J.Rees@swansea.ac.uk G.H.Davies@swansea.ac.uk Abstract: This paper presents the case of the All-Wales Intensive Learning Academy (ILA) for Innovation in Health and Social Care (IHSC), established in the context of the broader Regional Innovation System (RIS) (Braczyk et al., 1998, Pino and Ortega, 2018). Developing capacity and capability for innovation in the Health and Social Care sectors in south west Wales has been a longstanding endeavour alongside efforts to revitalise the region’s economy. Welsh Government’s recent initiative to establish Intensive Learning Academies to support development of senior leaders and managers within the Health and Social Care is a further endeavour within the RIS. The IHSC ILA in particular has relevant to this agenda, operating across Health & Social Care, with further engagement of private and third sectors. Delivered by a partnership of Swansea University, Cardiff & Vale University Health Board and the Bevan Commission, the initial phase of the IHSC has involved three of its core offerings being launched, engaging just over 200 learners. While the initiative is still in its early stages, this case study provides an initial examination of its activity exploring its potential to support the RIS through consideration of Region, Innovation, Network, Learning, and Interaction. As this work continues, it offers potential learning for future phases of IHSC, and to other post-industrial regions grappling concurrent challenges relating to population health and economic development. Keywords: health, social care, innovation, Wales 1. Introduction The south west Wales region is home to just under 700,000 people, mainly in the urban conurbations of Swansea and Neath Port Talbot, though with notable communities spreading westwards into the more rural counties of Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. Combined, this region also accommodates 302,000 jobs and 22,000 businesses (SU, 2018) across the Swansea Bay City Region (SBCR). This geography broadly reflects the combined ‘Swansea Bay and Western Valleys’ and ‘Pembrokeshire’ regions originally defined within the ‘fuzzy boundaries’ of the Wales Spatial Plan (WAG, 2004), aligning with the areas of the University Health Boards covered by Swansea Bay and Hywel Dda within the ARCH (A Regional Collaboration for Health) initiative (ARCH, 2017). The region has over recent decades been undergoing the transition to a post-industrial knowledge economy. Efforts have been made by Welsh Government to mobilise academia and industry to support this transition with emphasis on innovation (WAG, 2003) (WG, 2014), particularly in targeted sectors (WG, 2013). This ambition links with the concept of Territorial Innovation Systems, described initially at a national level by Lundvall (1992) and Nelson (1993), with subsequent consideration at regional level (RIS) (Cooke, 2001b), including specifically the case of south west Wales (Cooke, 2001b; Davies et al. (2018)). In parallel, it has worked to overcome population health challenges exacerbated recently by the Covid-19 pandemic, including existing engrained health inequalities (Brunt et al., 2017). This paper examines one of the efforts to support this transition, the Intensive Learning Academy for Innovation in Health and Social Care. The following sections introduce the Academy concept and its activities, through the five key, linked concepts within RIS identified by Cooke (2001b) of Region, Innovation, Network, Learning, and Interaction. 2. Southwest Wales Health and Social Care innovation ecosystem The Health and Social Care sectors are significant within the Swansea Bay City Region, and are aligned to the Life Sciences sector which have been the focus of prior work (Davies et al., 2018). They represent a notable part of regional employment with the University Health Boards alone (i.e. the major parts of the public health systems) of Swansea Bay and Hywel Dda employing over 17,000 people. This is in addition to the General Practitioners and pharmacies of the primary care system or the employment of Social Care providers (ARCH, 2017). 284 Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ECIE 2022