Bridging the Data Skills Gap: The Role of the UK’s National Innovation Centre for Data and its Data Innovation Bootcamp

The UK’s National Innovation Centre for Data was created to address the severe data skills shortage preventing organisations innovating through data. It mainly achieves this through collaborative skills transfer projects. This paper focusses on how experience from these projects has also been used to teach the next generation of data scientists through the `Data Innovation Bootcamp’, an experiential programme that integrates data science with practical business problem-solving. Unlike traditional data science education, which often emphasises technical detail in isolation, the Bootcamp emphasises the practical application of data science in industry to address real business challenges.