What higher education ministers talk about when they talk about innovation

Abstract This article analyses speeches made by UK higher education ministers, from the election of the Conservative government in May 2015 through to September 2020. The article uses disruptive innovation as a theoretical framework through which to analyse ministers’ perspectives on innovation. The methodology is content analysis with a directed approach. Fourteen speeches are analysed. Innovation is shown to serve an economic agenda, enabling students to transact their higher education quickly and subsequently function without state support. Innovation is also a flexible term offering numerous solutions, from providing economic growth; to militating against the isolationism of Brexit; to providing a route out of the pandemic. Innovation is intended to enhance economic performance and to deliver efficiency, but not to fundamentally disrupt the existing organisation of the UK’s higher education sector. Innovation, as articulated by Ministers for Higher Education, comprises sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation, but not disruptive innovation.


Introduction
A General Election was held in the UK on 7 May 2015, resulting in a Conservative government with a majority of 12. The Conservative Party was still in power in 2022, with a majority of 80 following the December 2019 general election, albeit reduced to 73 subsequently, due to by-election defeats.
Within the period 2015-2020, the Brexit referendum took place on 23 June 2016, leading to the UK's departure from the European Union on 31 January 2020. Furthermore, a Higher Education and Research Act was passed in April 2017, leading to the formation of the Office for Students as a market regulator. The Act also replaced seven research councils with UK Research and Innovation, enabling the government to set the direction of research. Innovation, as a theme present in higher education ministers' speeches, is not limited to the period analysed in this article. The period is, however, worthy of study because it incorporates the UK's decision to leave the European Union; the process of that departure; and, latterly, the initial impact of the pandemic when it struck in 2020. Table 1 presents the occupants of the post from the election of the Conservative government in 2015 to July 2022.
This article analyses speeches made by UK Conservative higher education minsters, 2015-2020, with a focus on how they articulate innovation in higher education. The theory of disruptive innovation is used to analyse what innovation means in the speeches and the value ministers attach to it. The specific questions addressed in the research are as follows: • How do higher education ministers define innovation? • How do ministers aim to apply innovation? • What value do ministers place on innovation?
The article considers the impact of Brexit in relation to innovation, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, recognising that 2015-2020 is not an undifferentiated period. Legislative measures featuring in this article are presented in Table 2.
The research is of interest because it shows how exhortations to the sector to innovate are driven primarily by a desire to enhance the economic productivity of students and to make them, and institutions, more efficient. Innovation is also deployed to counter the impact of Brexit and the pandemic. No previous paper has undertaken research of this kind, although Brooks (2018) did include four speeches by the higher education minister at the time (Jo Johnson) in an analysis of how higher education students get constructed in a range of documents, including those from trades unions and from business and employer organisations.
A brief survey of the history of the word 'innovation' shows it has not been a static term. From the Renaissance to the twentieth century, innovation was seen as threatening, disruptive by definition and in ways which were hostile to social order (Godin 2013). In the twentieth century, however, the term became associated with progress: Perren and Sapsed (2013) analysed the presence of the word 'innovation' in UK parliamentary proceedings of 1960-2005, finding a 10-fold increase in its usage in parliamentary debates, and finding it used in increasingly positive terms (see also Flavin 2020). Moreover, the applicability of the word innovation has broadened: Pfotenhauer and Juhl argue that 'innovation is more than a mere vehicle for techno-economic development worthy of government attention: It is also a means of governing society through national projects, through the rationalization and legitimation of state action, and through national identity formation ' (2017, 83). Innovation is even one of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals: 'Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation' (United Nations 2015). Innovation has meant different things to different stakeholders and, within the timeframe covered in this article, innovation offers the prospect of shorter and cheaper degree programmes; a means to galvanise the economy; an antidote to the potential isolationism of Brexit; and a route out of the pandemic. Disruptive innovation is a theory originating in the Harvard Business School in the 1990s, most closely associated with the work of Clayton Christensen (1952Christensen ( -2020. Christensen (1997) argues that powerful incumbents in markets can be overthrown by disruptors who offer goods or services which are cheaper, simpler and more convenient than the incumbent's offering. The disruptor's offering is technologically inferior, appealing to the low end of existing markets or to current non-consumption, and thus the incumbent ignores the disruptor because it is not perceived as a threat. The disruptor, having achieved a foothold, improves its performance incrementally and, by the time the incumbent realises the threat, the momentum is already with the disruptor. Mahto, Belousova, and Ahluwalia (2020) argue that disruptive innovation, by appealing to new markets or the low end of existing markets, can transform scarcity into abundance. It is a theory which offers the extension of opportunity and can pose a threat to the existing organisation of a market or area of practice in which it takes place.
Through two initial books (Christensen 1997;Christensen and Raynor 2003) and subsequent studies (Christensen and Eyring 2011;Christensen, Bartman, and van Bever 2016), three categories of disruption emerge: disruptive innovation, sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation. Disruptive innovation describes the process whereby a new entrant disrupts an incumbent through a product or service appealing to low-end customers or previous non-consumers. Examples include the Honda Supercub which introduced new constituencies to motorcycling by being cheap and easy to use. Honda, as its bikes expanded in terms of power and performance, ended up taking a sizeable market segment from the dominant incumbent, Harley Davidson (Christensen 1997). Another example is the Sony transistor radio in the 1950s, which was initially technologically inferior to valve-based radios but was affordable to a new constituency, teenagers, who popularised the device and, as its performance improved, it disrupted the valve-based radio (Christensen and Raynor 2003) until the transistor was, in its turn, disrupted by radio over the Internet. Sustaining innovation is the incremental improvement of goods or services along an established performance trajectory, such as a new iteration of a make and model of car being slightly more fuel efficient than its predecessor. Efficiency innovation enables more to be done with less, such as self-checkout facilities in supermarkets or in university libraries, with implications for cost-cutting, most notably in terms of jobs.
The level of interest in disruptive innovation as an analytical lens has increased: Martínez-Vergara and Valls-Pasola (2021, 896) show that, between 2014 and 2017, the number of  Education and research act  2018  the office for students  2018  uK research and innovation  2019 uK international research and innovation strategy articles on disruptive innovation almost doubled, from 61 to 119. Moreover, Guo et al. argue that disruptive innovation is the preserve of capitalist economies: 'disruptive innovations are discovered and financed by large numbers of independently owned small firms in capitalist economies rather than in socialist economies where state ownership is the only option ' (2021, 143). Therefore, and as an avowedly capitalist party, a Conservative government may be well suited to develop and nurture disruptive innovation, a practice referred to by Kim et al. (2020) as 'an act of revolt' . However, this article argues that UK Ministers for Higher Education urge sustaining innovation or efficiency innovation, rather than disruptive innovation.

Literature review
The study of innovation in higher education is an emerging field (Cai 2017). Ma and Cai (2021) suggest innovation can be understood as an interaction between structures, institutional rules and individuals' practice. Disruptive innovation, as a specific theoretical framework, has previously been applied to studies of higher education, showing, for example, how universities' technology-enhanced learning strategies are cautious documents advocating the enhanced support of existing practices, rather than offering anything new and genuinely innovative (Flavin and Quintero 2018). Disruptive innovation theory has also been used to evaluate students' opinions of online assessment (Flavin 2021a).
Universities can propel innovation and support economic development (Philbin 2015). Moreover, the capacity to innovate can determine a university's success: 'the universities that are able to adopt new practices quickly will potentially perform on a higher level than slower adopters… this could even result in the wholescale restructuring of the university sector including the possible closure of poor performing universities ' (2015, 1140). In addition, innovation promises 'enhanced delivery channels in regard to effectiveness and efficiency ' (2015, 1142). However, these comprise sustaining or efficiency innovations rather than disruptive innovations. That said, changes that resulted in the realignment of the sector and the closure of universities would be disruptive: McCann, Hutchison, and Adair (2022) note that 'the government are mindful of how lenders may react to universities which face financial difficulties' (p. 1516). Universities in the UK are under pressure to innovate to ensure their growth and indeed survival.
One of the central tensions in higher education is whether it comprises primarily an individual or social good. Kelly, Fair, and Evans argue that 'higher education policy in the UK increasingly conceives undergraduate students as individual entrepreneurs, transacting their way through higher education, preparing themselves for high-earning success in the global field of market competition' (2017, 106). Hewitt-Dundas and Roper argue that 'In the UK, higher education is increasingly a marketised service sharing many characteristics with other professional services such as legal, medical or financial services' (2018, 121), a point made earlier by Boden and Nedeva in 'Educating students is now, to a significant extent, a mass, global corporatised business exhibiting almost all of the characteristics associated with making cars or providing financial services ' (2010, 40) and shared by Matthews and Kotzee (2021) who argue that reforms since 2010 have been aimed at marketising UK higher education. Furthermore, Jayadeva, Brooks, and Lažetić (2022) interviewed higher education staff who stated students had come to behave as customers, expecting a return on their investment. Terms such as 'job hunters ' and 'entrepreneurs' were used;Jayadeva, Brooks, and Lažetić (2022) attributed these changes to higher education policies.
Innovation can serve the individual or society, or both, and where ministers place emphasis in this regard indicates the political principles and the direction of innovation. McCann, Hutchison, and Adair (2022) argue: the UK Higher Education sector has experienced a significant change to its funding base with a shift away from government funding, to operating within a highly competitive marketised environment. This shift has impacted the governance and management structures within the sector, with universities encouraged to adopt a more corporate and managerial style. (p. 1502) Innovation serves economic goals in a marketised system, enabling and enhancing employability. Brooks, surveying a range of UK policy documents, argues that students get constructed as 'future workers ' (2018, 750) with higher education 'presented as a critical period of preparation for employment ' (2018, 757).
Innovation can comprise part of higher education's role. However, universities are often slow to innovate. Hewitt-Dundas and Roper note how innovation can be defined in primarily economic terms, 'the commercialisation of new knowledge or technology to generate increased sales or value for consumers or related stakeholders ' (2018, 123). Hoffman and Holzhüter argue that 'innovation resembles mutation, the biological process that keeps species evolving so that they can better compete for survival ' (2011, 3), while also arguing that the university 'has historically been slow to adopt the realities of this natural selection process' (2011, 4; see also Cai 2017, 597). League tables for universities are characterised by continuity more than change (Amsler and Bolsmann 2012) and, in the UK, the higher education system is stratified through mission groups. Given the continuity in the global elite in higher education, universities are characterised more by inertia than by innovation (Marginson 2013;Welbourn, Devins, and Reynolds 2019). McCann, Hutchison, and Adair (2022) argue that contemporary higher education is characterised by 'a more managerial culture, with the focus on ensuring profitability from all teaching and most research activities, with consequent less focus on the need for academic breadth and depth' . That said, Cai (2017, 607) argues, 'the unique empirical ground in higher education may offer opportunities for testing, enriching, and developing theories of innovation' . Higher education is required to be financially viable, with individual universities expected to produce a surplus and to produce students who, in turn, produce surplus value.
Having reviewed literature relevant to the research questions, the next section outlines the research methodology.

Materials and methods
The research investigated how higher education ministers define innovation; how they aim to apply innovation; and the value they place on innovation. The speeches used for analysis were selected from the Gov.uk website, the official website for the UK government. This article assumes that the speeches published on the website are accurate and authoritative.
For data gathering, the name of each minister was entered on Gov.uk, together with the word 'speech' . In total, 14 speeches were identified; all of the speeches that could be found for each minister are included in this research. The speeches were downloaded and analysed. Each was read repeatedly, to evaluate how innovation was defined, how the minster concerned aimed to apply it and the value they placed on innovation. Disruptive innovation was used as a theory to analyse the data. A word-frequency search was undertaken on 'innovat' (to capture 'innovation' , 'innovate' , 'innovative' and 'innovating'). A further word search was undertaken on 'two year' and 'accelerated' to see whether the subject of shorter degrees (an efficiency innovation) featured in the speeches, and on 'Britain' and 'British' to see whether questions of nationhood became more prominent in relation to innovation as the UK's exit from the European Union drew closer. Table 3 presents the date of each speech and the minster concerned. Content analysis is the methodology for this article, engaging with both manifest and latent content (Bryman 2016). However, it is more accurate to describe the methodology as qualitative content analysis with a directed approach (Hsieh and Shannon 2005). A directed approach to qualitative content analysis starts with a theory. For this article, the theory of disruptive innovation provides the three categories of disruptive innovation (offering new goods, services or practices that disrupt existing provision); sustaining innovation (offering incremental improvement along an established performance trajectory); and efficiency innovation (offering less resource-intensive, automated provision). Qualitative content analysis with a directed approach is used to validate a theory and extend its applications, the theory in this case providing the initial code of 'innovation' and its variants (Hsieh and Shannon 2005, 1277, 1281and 1283. No research was undertaken with human subjects in this article. Overall, the research method aims to identify relevant speeches and subject them to content analysis from a distinct theoretical perspective.
Having outlined the research design, the next section analyses the speeches in relation to the research questions and the theoretical approach.

Results
The 14 speeches analysed in this article demonstrate a paradox: state intervention on one hand, and the drive to produce graduates ready to function in a neoliberal economy on the other, who can minimise time spent outside the workforce, treating higher education as an investment in human capital producing impressive financial returns (Boden and Nedeva 2010;Komljenovic and Robertson 2016) or comprising an input-output system (Olssen and Peters 2005). A notably regulated system is encouraged to produce graduates who do not draw upon the state for support and who repay their student loans.

Jo Johnson 2015-2018
Jo Johnson's speech of 1 July 2015 states: 'I want to see more outreach and more innovation in terms of course length and design. Degree Apprenticeships and two-year courses in particular offer a more accessible route to a higher education and a faster path to productive employment' (Johnson 2015). Innovation serves employability, minimising time spent outside the workforce. Degree apprenticeships involve employers in the design and delivery of the curriculum, challenging institutional autonomy. Apprenticeships may appeal to students unwilling to take on loans but, as employers recruit the participants, universities are not in full charge of admissions (Powell and Walsh 2018).
Johnson also made a speech on 8 September 2016 , a day after the passage of the Higher Education and Research Bill, which became the Higher Education and Research Act (2017). The Act established the Office for Students, the regulator of higher education in England. The Act also established UK Research and Innovation, funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, having responsibility for regulating and funding research. In the speech, innovation again serves economic growth: 'Our education system is fundamental to the UK's economic future and success, creating the networks, ideas and innovations that will keep us globally competitive' .
Johnson gave a speech on 20 July 2017 (Johnson 2017a), speaking in favour of the Higher Education and Reform Act which 'makes it easier for universities to offer two-year degrees to students keen for a faster pace of learning and a quicker route in the workforce' . Higher education offers efficiency innovation, minimising periods when students are economically inactive and unproductive. As Johnson notes: Students undertaking an accelerated course borrow less money over a shorter period and forgo less in terms of missed earnings. This should mean they are likely to repay a greater proportion of their loans than equivalent students on full length courses, meaning the costs should be lower for government as well. (Johnson 2017a) Entering the workforce after a minimum of delay supports the student loans system by enhancing the possibility of repayment. The intrinsic value of two-year degrees is not stressed; the extrinsic value, to the student in terms of time spent outside the workforce and to the government in expectation of having its loans repaid, is stressed. The speech also disregards the argument that accelerated degrees can increase students' stress and the likelihood of mental illness (Hack-Polay and Read 2020). Academic breadth and depth (McCann, Hutchison, and Adair 2022) are not mentioned in the speech.
Johnson also says 'We want prospective students to make well-informed and meaningful choices between institutions offering innovative and flexible ways of learning' (Johnson 2017a). Innovation is structural. It may be a disruptive proposition by offering a degree in two years but it is intended to make a qualification and an institution more attractive to students on the grounds of efficiency, while also enhancing economic productivity. Johnson states that higher education will in many cases be 'their third largest life-long expenditure after a home and pension plan' . The position is neoliberal, lessening the state's responsibility and positioning the student as a customer of educational goods and services, purchasing higher education as they purchase a roof over their heads and financial sufficiency in old age. Johnson talks explicitly about students 'rights as consumers' . Higher education as envisioned by Johnson offers efficiency innovation, enabling quick movement through the higher education system and into employment.
Johnson made a further speech on 7 September 2017, arguing 'Graduates on average have better paid jobs. They are more likely to be a source of innovation and growth' (Johnson 2017b). Higher education is expected to nurture innovation whilst being a notably regulated sector itself. If innovation implies flexibility to experiment, students have to develop this quality while being in environments which are subject to increasing control. In his conclusion, Johnson argues: We have the opportunity to … create a high-quality, diverse, innovative, inclusive and sustainably funded HE system for the next generation. It will be a system that embraces accountability and can confidently stand up to the most acute scrutiny. It could be the envy of the world. (Johnson 2017b) The system is rigorously regulated by the state and encouraged to produce graduates who do not look to the state for support. Johnson's speeches present innovation as a route to enhanced efficiency, producing a system in which loan-repaying students spend a minimum amount of time outside the workforce. The advocacy of two-year programmes may appear to be disruptive but is about compressing existing programmes into shorter time frames, comprising efficiency innovation.

Sam Gyimah 2018
Sam Gyimah became Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation in January 2018, with 'Innovation' being incorporated into the job title, a practice which persisted until February 2020. He gave a speech on 28 February 2018, stating that 'in the worlds of higher education, science and innovation, you are shaping the future of our country and the world in which we live' (Gyimah 2018a). Gyimah presents the oversight and control of higher education in positive terms: The scrutiny that universities find themselves under is a sign of how much this matters to students and to the country as a whole. What may feel to some in the sector like a revolt is more like a revolution -a revolution pushing the sector towards greater responsibility and accountability to students. However, the regulations and legislation enacted since 2015 are initiated by governments, not students. The accountability is to state bodies; the revolution is a paradoxical subordination to increasing state oversight and control. Gyimah's position is revolutionary in the sense that UK ministers direct substantial changes in how higher education is offered with, for example shorter programmes. In this sense Gyimah's position is disruptive and may appeal to students who do not want to take three years out of the workforce and may have been reluctant to undertake higher education in a three-year programme. However, Gyimah's position is more akin to sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation in terms of how higher education is to be used, enabling and supporting economic growth with the minimum time commitment, a position also advocated by his predecessor.
Gyimah adds: The Opposition's suggestion that the problems of the sector will vanish if only the burden of payment is shifted back to the taxpayer is pure snake-oil … We should not allow the Opposition's obsession for subjecting the sector to greater state control to distract us from looking for real solutions for the challenges the sector faces. (Gyimah 2018a) Gyimah objects to greater state funding and control (the Labour Party, under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, was arguing for the abolition of higher education tuition fees) yet the Conservative government had introduced a series of regulatory measures since 2015, including The Higher Education and Research Act (2017), the Office for Students (2018) and UK Research and Innovation (2018). The measures enacted by the Conservative government since 2015 aim for sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation by encouraging the production of students who are economically active, with the sector offering the efficient discharge of graduates into the economy after, in some cases, two years of higher education.
Sam Gyimah made another speech on 7 June 2018 (Gyimah 2018b). Gyimah claims 'We are now living in a different age: the Age of the Student' . He objects to courses that do not serve economic productivity: 'courses where students tend not to earn graduate salaries after graduation account for a disproportionate share of the costs to the public purse of the student loans system' . Courses need to produce graduates who go on to earn sufficient salaries to pay back their loans, an efficiency innovation. Gyimah (2018b) states: 'This speech is also a call to arms for innovation … We have now recast regulation in a way that is explicitly designed to facilitate innovation … I challenge all universities to make the most of it' . The language used by Gyimah during his tenure ('revolution' in February 2018; 'call to arms' in June 2018) places considerable responsibility on universities but is not insurrectionary. As Gyimah goes on to argue: 'There is a huge demand for accelerated degrees, for new ways of delivering university education, and for undergraduate and post graduate courses that focus on the higher technical skills that our innovation and technology driven economy needs' . This is not a disruptive form of higher education. It is a continuum of a higher education system that has been privatised and marketised since the introduction of tuition fees of £9000 per year in 2012. It comprises sustaining innovation, enhancing the economy, and efficiency innovation, reducing costs. Gyimah offers the Age of the Student, but for the student as consumer rather than learner. The call to arms sounds disruptive but is, in practice, focused on efficiency innovation. Higher education, tailored for economic priorities, is to be consumed quickly.

Chris Skidmore, 2018-2019 and 2019-2020
Chris Skidmore became Minister in December 2018. He gave a speech on 31 January 2019, highlighting recent regulation: As the first major regulatory reform of the English higher education sector in 25 years, the HERA [Higher Education and Research Act 2017] created the Office for Students (OfS), a new body to regulate and fund higher education providers. It also created UK Research and Innovation. (Skidmore 2019a) Skidmore adds: Innovation doesn't distinguish between creative skills and scientific knowledge; indeed it thrives on it … As knowledge progresses, so too does innovation. To be fit purpose [sic] in the future, it is vital the sector continues to develop not just the subjects people study, but the way in which they study them. Just this week, Parliament approved regulations to enable more universities and colleges to offer accelerated degrees. (Skidmore 2019a) Skidmore sees innovation as an axiomatic good: 'we share a common goal and a common mission to create and maintain the best, most innovative and most flexible higher education sector in the world' . Disruptive innovation argues innovation arises from practice rather than design (Christensen and Raynor 2003). A plethora of regulations can inhibit creative practice and innovation.
In a speech from March 2019, Skidmore argues that 'Under no circumstances is it acceptable to make crude profit from students' , adding that 'The Office for Students' regulatory framework also tells approved providers that it expects them to take into account relevant guidance on consumer law when developing their policies and procedures' (Skidmore 2019b). The idea of students as customers is underlined through the regulatory framework. Making 'crude profit' from students is condemned (Skidmore, in his speech, was specifically referring to student accommodation and contracted-out services), but the perception of students as customers is solidified, promoting a higher education system enabling enhanced admission to the workplace where students can be economically productive, contributing to the State through taxation but not looking to the State for housing or liveable old age pensions (Johnson 2017a).
Jo Johnson had a brief, second period as minister (July-September 2019), during which time he made no speeches according to Gov.uk, before Chris Skidmore returned. Skidmore spoke in October 2019, as the UK was negotiating its departure from the European Union, and with a pro-Brexit Prime Minster, Boris Johnson. Skidmore argues that 'what I have found, absolutely everywhere I have visited, is a research and innovation ecosystem that is truly international … To be a British institution means to be an international institution' (Skidmore 2019c). In the same speech, Skidmore refers to the UK's International Research and Innovation Strategy (2019) which pledges 'We will provide innovation hubs across the UK for global innovators, entrepreneurs and investors to connect and build industries of the future' (2019c, 17). Skidmore argues: To succeed after Brexit, we will do everything we can to make sure that the UK remains open and welcoming to the brightest minds. Our future as a global knowledge economy depends on this Freedom of Talent -on protecting and enhancing our attractiveness as the best place to study, to undertake research, and to start and grow an innovative business. (Skidmore 2019c) The freedom of talent in Skidmore's speech implies a mobility which is challenged by Brexit because freedom of movement within the European Union is no longer possible following the UK's departure. An international innovation ecosystem is problematic within a nationalistic political climate.
Chris Skidmore made two speeches in the second half of January 2020. The first was a week before the UK's formal departure from the European Union. Skidmore states: Brexit represents an opportunity: a new era of global collaboration. We'll be looking to forge even closer ties with partners across the world in all areas. But especially in EdTech, so that we can learn from each other and drive innovation forward everywhere. (Skidmore 2020a) Skidmore also states 'We said we' d support and nourish innovators … So, in 2019 … we launched innovation fund competitions for technology … in a drive to improve the workload and effectiveness of these areas of work' . The guidance for the competitive funding states ' All proposals must be business focused' (Innovation Funding Service 2019). Skidmore's argument is for efficiency innovation, a smoothing process, militating against the potentially isolating impact of Brexit. Elsewhere in the speech, innovation is given a national identity: 'it's been great to see how universities are using the best of British innovation' . Skidmore rewrites the impact of Brexit: the UK is doing a number of things on a variety of different levels to lead on the world stage -and to forge ever closer ties with other countries so that we can make the most of the technological revolution together. (Skidmore 2020a) The technological revolution, a term Skidmore assumes more than defines, anaesthetises the impact of Brexit, forging international collaborations at a time when the UK government was, through Brexit, adopting a more nationalistic approach.
Skidmore refers to the formation of further education bodies: a new National College of Digital Skills, 12 Institutes of Technology and The Institute of Coding. Skidmore argues that, 'Together, those measures should help create an army of new digital innovators and entrepreneurs' (Skidmore 2020a). The militaristic metaphor for innovation links it with entrepreneurialism and argues for innovation as a form of economic advancement, comprising Sustaining Innovation. Skidmore adds: 'We continue to support start-ups and other innovative tech-led businesses through a range of grants, innovation loans and business development support' . Skidmore proposes Brexit antidotes, measures to exempt education from the potential constraints that follow from leaving the European Union.
Skidmore's next speech as Minister was two days later, on 24 January 2020: 'I've been determined to champion the excellent work on research and innovation taking place around the country, both by universities and industry' (Skidmore 2020b), adding 'For science and innovation, we too need a "One Nation" strategy for R&D [research and development]' . The unifying mention of Disraelian Conservatism's 'one nation' (a phrase also used by Jo Johnson in his speech of 1 July 2015, in relation to social mobility) dissolves difference and offers healing. He also mentions: 'our pipeline of researchers and innovators that will be delivering the step-change, right across the country, in research and development-driven productivity' . Innovation has an economic purpose, allied with industry, comprising sustaining innovation.
Skidmore argues that the government is accelerating innovation: 'I have announced a record increase to Higher Education Innovation Funding, bringing it to £250 million per year, which will turbocharge universities' knowledge exchange activities' (Skidmore 2020b). He adds 'we are doubling our investment into research and innovation' , but innovation may not flourish in a sector constrained by a plethora of state interventions. According to Skidmore, the UK is on 'our journey towards becoming a true "innovation nation"' . Skidmore also refers to the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC): 'the AMRC has been able to transform an area of Yorkshire, formerly best known for its mining pits. This is now a thriving innovation ecosystem' . The AMRC, based at the University of Sheffield, is 'a network of world-leading research and innovation centres working with manufacturing companies of any size from around the globe' (AMRC 2021). Higher education is one component of a system characterised by innovation, serving economic development. The nature of the innovation itself is often left unexamined, assumed to be a force for good. Skidmore talks about 'inspiring new plans to develop an Innovation District to strengthen university, civic and business partnerships, with business-led innovation right at its heart' . Innovation will be driven by business but incorporate universities. Skidmore adds 'It's easy to see how developing innovation districts like this will be essential for raising regional prosperity -where research excellence and innovation strengths can mesh with local and regional industry' . The impact of Brexit is ignored and innovation is seen as a means of distributing and equalising the nation's wealth. Skidmore adds: 'We are firmly committed to delivering historic increases to R&D [research and development] funding, to truly harnessing the power of innovation' . Innovation is to be controlled by the state in the service of the economy. Innovation is extolled but it is ultimately sustaining innovation, designed to serve a governmental agenda of economic growth along established trajectories. Sustaining innovation, incremental progress, is a reassuring proposition at a politically febrile time. Innovation offers a compensatory, constrained function, offering the opposite to disruption.

Michelle Donelan, 2020-2022
Chris Skidmore was replaced as minister by Michelle Donelan in February 2020, after the UK had left the European Union and just before the pandemic. Donelan gave a speech on 1 July 2020, arguing that 'In order to tackle the gaps in achievement and higher education progression between groups of learners, and ensure they don't widen because of the impact of COVID-19, new, innovative forms of collaboration at the national level will be essential' (Donelan 2020a). Innovation is seen as being able to fix a problem, in this case through collaboration. As well as serving an economic agenda, higher education is urged to fulfil a social agenda, too.
Donelan then gave a speech on 21 July 2020 (Donelan 2020b), in which innovation is constructed as a national saviour. It is a main point of reference throughout the speech: 'Over the last few months we have seen our H.E. sector really step up and innovate in the face of adversity. Putting students' wellbeing at the heart of their plans and acting quickly with innovative solutions to support learning' . Innovation features as both verb and adjective, combating the pandemic and solving the educational problems the pandemic creates. Other quotes from the speech include the following: there have been so many fantastic examples of innovation across the board; I believe now is the time to build on the recent innovations that universities have been developing; such a dynamic, innovative and student-focused HE sector here in the UK. (Donelan 2020b) Innovation is a distinctive quality of the UK sector, militating against the worst impact of the pandemic and offering a route to new forms of practice.
Higher education staff, Donelan argues, 'have responded to the challenges of COVID with astonishing innovation … Now is the time for the sector to build on these innovations' (Donelan 2020b). Moreover, 'now is the time to innovate … Now is the time to build on the recent innovation we have seen' . The minister's exhortations create an imperative for innovation, but innovation remains reified rather than anatomised. The tone and structure of the speech is consistent throughout: 'now is the time -the time for innovation and change -change that will safeguard our universities'; 'Now really is the time for true social mobility and innovation' . Innovation is not simply change. Innovation is the catalyst for post-pandemic reconstruction.
Michelle Donelan made a further speech in September 2020, just prior to the start of the new academic year, with the pandemic still determining the type of education that was going to be offered to students. Innovation is identified as transformational: 'the resilience and innovation that you have shown has not only been impressive, but has also led to changes in the delivery and accessibility of Higher Education forever' (Donelan 2020c). More explicitly: 'We know that universities have a reputation for innovation, after all, it is what you do, but to see it transforming the learning experience for thousands of young people, that has been a revelation' . The impact of innovation is almost biblical; it becomes a property and practice of the higher education sector. Sam Gyimah's revolution becomes Michelle Donelan's revelation, moving from the political to the spiritual and transcendent. Innovation is envisaged as doing the government's work for it. Innovation equalises opportunity, offers a route out of the pandemic and enables economic growth. The UK government's strategy relies on innovation while at the same time bringing a plethora of regulation and oversight bodies to the higher education system. Michelle Donelan's pandemic-era explication of innovation is distinctive because it offers a route through and out of the pandemic. Its applications are pedagogic as well as economic, and potentially disruptive. The value of innovation, rhetorically, is higher than ever but its anatomisation is virtually non-existent.

Word frequencies
Jo Johnson made four speeches as Minister from July 2015 to September 2017. He made 11 mentions of innovation or its variants, but five of these were in the context of formal titles (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; or UK Research and Innovation) and were excluded from the word-frequency calculation, leaving six mentions over 14,648 words, comprising one mention every 2441.3 words, to one decimal place. Sam Gyimah made five mentions of innovation in 5913 words, comprising one mention every 1182.6 words.
In five speeches from January 2019 to January 2020, Chris Skidmore made 51 references to innovation or its variants in 19,426 words (excluding mentions in the context of formal titles), comprising one mention every 380.9 words, to one decimal place. In Michelle Donelan's four speeches, July-September 2020, innovation or its variants are mentioned 17 times in 7199 words, comprising one mention every 423.5 words, to one decimal place. Michelle Donelan mentions either 'innovate' , 'innovative' or 'innovation' 11 times in her speech of 21 July 2020. The speech comprises 2186 words, hence innovation or its variants Table 4. Ministers' mentions of innovation or its variants, in descending order of frequency.

Minister
Mentions of innovation or variants (to one decimal place) chris skidmore one mention every 380.9 words Michelle donelan one mention every 423.5 words sam gyimah one mention every 1182.6 words Jo Johnson one mention every 2441.3 words are mentioned once every 198.7 words, to one decimal place. The results are summarised in Table 4. The two most recent ministers, Skidmore and Donelan, made significantly more mentions of innovation. At the same time, the UK went through the post-referendum process of leaving the European Union and, from 2020, the pandemic struck.
Enthusiasm for shorter degrees waned in ministers' speeches over the period. In his speeches of 20 July 2017 and 7 November 2017, Johnson mentions two-year programmes twice and accelerated programmes 13 times. This compares to one mention of accelerated programmes by Gyimah (on 7 June 2018); one mention of two-year programmes and three mentions of accelerated programmes by Skidmore (on 31 October 2019), and two mentions of two-year programmes and accelerated programmes by Donelan (once each in her speeches of 21 July and 10 September 2020).
Johnson mentions 'Britain' or 'British' four times: three times in his speech of 8 September 2016 and once in his speech of 7 September 2017. Gyimah mentions 'Britain' once in his speech of 28 February 2018 and three times in his speech of 7 June 2018 (also mentioning 'British' once in the 7 June speech). Skidmore mentions 'Britain' once in his speech of 31 January 2019 but mentions 'Britain' or 'British' 16 times in his speech of 9 October 2019, a figure which excludes mentions of the British Academy, where the speech was given. 'Britain' or 'British' also features six times in his speech of 22 January 2020. Donelan mentions 'Britain' once, in her speech of 1 July 2020. Chris Skidmore, the minister who mentions 'Britain' or 'British' far more than any other minister in this period, held office from December 2018 to February 2020 (apart from a three-month interval in summer 2019).

Conclusion
Ministers for UK higher education exhort universities to innovate. Their aim in doing so is, primarily, to create economically productive graduates who will not depend on the State for support: as Olssen and Peters note, 'In neoliberalism the state seeks to create an individual that is an enterprising and competitive entrepreneur ' (2005, 315). Innovation serves a long-term outcome; the removal of the State's obligation to provide. A post-Brexit nation of neoliberal graduates can minimise time spent outside the workforce and focus on being economically productive and self-sufficient, innovating in the national interest.
That said, while neoliberal approaches are dominant, state interventions seek to control and shape the higher education sector. In addition to the measures summarised in Table 2, other government interventions in the period include the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (2017); the International Education Strategy (2019, updated 2021); an EdTech strategy (2019); and the Higher Education Task Force (2020). Moreover, the Act of 2017 was preceded by a Green Paper (2015), a White Paper (2016) and the Higher Education and Research Bill (2017). Paradoxically, highly regulated institutions are encouraged to produce graduates who thrive in a deregulated economy, an outcome which is encouraged to happen as swiftly as possible after registration, minimising economically unproductive time.
Ministers define innovation in primarily economic terms. It is a means to enhance higher education and make it more efficient, in part by lessening time spent outside the workforce. It is also understood, by Michelle Donelan, as a route out of the pandemic. Innovation is presented as a panacea offering an unencumbered route to improvement, comprising sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation, but the clamour to innovate disregards the point that innovation is a complex process arising from practice more than design (Christensen and Raynor 2003). Innovation is also flexible in ministers' speeches. It can enable less time to be spent outside the workforce; it can militate against the isolating impact of Brexit; it can offer a route out of the pandemic.
The period 2015-2020 is not undifferentiated. Two-year, accelerated degrees feature notably in Jo Johnson's speeches of July and November 2017, but are spoken about less thereafter. 'Britain' and 'British' are both mentioned infrequently until Chris Skidmore's speeches of October 2019 and January 2020, in the run-up to Britain's formal departure from the European Union. The word 'innovation' and its variants feature more prominently in the speeches of Chris Skidmore and Michelle Donelan, for whom innovation is a compensation for the uncertainties of Brexit and the impact of the pandemic. Over the period studied, efficiency innovation moves to sustaining innovation as the UK's departure from the European Union gets closer, but all masked in the rhetoric of disruptive innovation which will, purportedly, transform higher education but which, in practice, offers truncated higher education and, latterly, the prospect of amelioration in the face of a health crisis.
The search for ministers' speeches in this article was limited to Gov.uk, the official site for the UK government, in order to analyse authoritative speeches, but it is possible that the ministers concerned made other speeches unlisted on Gov.uk and therefore not featuring in this article. In addition, by adopting a directed approach to content analysis, this article foregrounds one theoretical perspective, but different perspectives will produce different analysis. Furthermore, content analysis, a qualitative approach, is prone to human error: Hsieh and Shannon (2005) argue that a directed approach to content analysis produces an informed yet strong bias. That said, all the speeches in this article are readily accessible on the Gov.uk website and are available for further analysis.
For future studies, a similar approach could be taken to other nations' governments. Furthermore, future studies could take a segmented approach to higher education in the UK, which is devolved by nation (Scotland has a different system). The UK higher education system also has a further layer of differentiation, with the Russell Group comprising the upper stratum. Disruptive innovation, conversely, often begins at the lower end of markets. International, comparative studies of ministers' speeches on higher education are possible, too, illuminating differences between higher education systems which could relate to how they are funded, given that a gap has emerged between systems where the state still plays a notable, subsidising role, and higher education systems which have been privatised and marketised.
Innovation is not necessarily good: Cortez (2014) cites the example of financial instruments which allowed widespread, unregulated participation in financial markets, contributing significantly to the financial crash of 2008 (see also Flavin 2021b). That said, disruptive innovation can turn scarcity into abundance (Mahto, Belousova, and Ahluwalia 2020). Sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation entrench existing advantages for existing stakeholders. Kim et al. (2020) describe disruptive innovation as an act of revolt but, and despite Gyimah's (2018a) assertion, changes in UK higher education do not comprise an act of revolt or revolution but the advocacy of a truncated experience of higher education enabling enhanced employability. The UK government's approach to higher education is not revolutionary because it serves the aim of producing economically productive graduates practising self-sufficiency, with a minimum of time taken out of the workforce. Higher education ministers set the direction of travel. Legislation serves the government's purposes. Individuals are at the receiving end of decision-making processes which use legislation encouraging rapid advancement through education programmes centred on employability and skills sought by employers. Interaction between roles, structures and individuals directs the specific innovation which takes place (Ma and Cai 2021).
Ministers' depictions of innovation are significant because innovation is seen as an axiomatic good. However, when innovation is scrutinised in ministers' speeches it often aligns with increased efficiency or sustained performance. Exhortations by ministers to innovate are often insubstantial in practice. Innovations acclaimed are often marginal (sustaining or efficient) rather than disruptive. Innovation is used as a value judgement when, in reality, little innovation is offered. Innovation in the speeches featured in this article is rarely innovative, other than in a qualified sense. Ministers use the flexibility of innovation to construct linguistic strategies for post-Brexit, national renewal: Pfotenhauer and Juhl (2017) argue that innovation contributes to national identity formation. Ministers aim for innovation as compensation. However, the innovation they advocate is more about efficiency and enhancement than disruption. Innovation is also presented as militating against the potentially deleterious effects of Brexit, providing national purpose and economic propulsion.
Innovation is emphasised still further in the pandemic, with a speech by the Minister referring to innovation repeatedly (Donelan 2020b), advocating it as a means of overcoming the pandemic. However, the Higher Education Policy Institute's (2021) report, based on a sample of 10,186, indicates that a majority of students in the UK regard their higher education as not being good value for money. Innovation is not a panacea. Higher education, a highly regulated system, has not enacted disruptive innovation and exists within regulatory frameworks which promote sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation. Innovation is advocated in United Nations (2015) Sustainable Development Goal Number Nine but innovation takes different forms and can be defined in radically different ways. When ministers talk about innovation, they talk about a system serving political need and an economic philosophy.