In Focus: Learning power
It’s that time of year at Insider where we turn our attention to educational matters and more precisely what our universities are doing to help local businesses and the regional economy.
Last Friday we staged a Question Time style event at the Great Hall at the University of Birmingham to discuss this issue in front of a business audience and on Tuesday a round table discussion in Coventry drilled down further to look for areas of convergence between what used to be known as town and gown.
My view is that universities have come a long way in the last few years and that most of the sniffiness about applied rather than pure research has disappeared, at least in this part of the world. These days most universities employ business development officers and some, such as Coventry, even have specialist consultancy arms. It’s not pure altruism of course - universities need to make a profit these days - but when it is working well business development units can tap into in-house expertise in numerous fields to help companies in areas such as research and development.
It is fair to say that the relationship has worked better with large companies. Universities have tended to prefer the larger, more lucrative projects available at this end of the market. But, recognising this, the last government was quite successful in building the relationship between SMEs and the local universities via initiatives such as the £3,000 innovation vouchers, which could be ‘cashed in’ at local universities against research and development spend. Knowledge transfer partnerships, whereby a post-graduate works with a business on a particular project have also proved very popular.
It is to be hoped that such schemes continue even in these cash-strapped times because there is a feeling that with regional business support - from the likes of Advantage West Midlands and Business Link - rapidly disappearing and local enterprise partnerships a long way from being a replacement for regional development agencies, universities may be able to partially fill that gap.
This is a big ask for universities as they are not set up for that purpose and are better working on medium to long-term projects rather than trying to find solutions to urgent problems. But we are where we are and those taking part in our events certainly seem to think that the working relationship between universities and SMEs needs to become closer.
It may be a sticking plaster and Sellotape solution to business support but I think our universities, most of which have worked closely with the manufacturing sector for a number of years, are better placed than most to fulfil this role.
Our round table - coverage of which will appear in the March issue of Insider - showed just how far ahead of the game our universities are in areas such as green automotive. Let’s hope that some of the ideas coming out of our centres of learning translate into innovative products and processes in the business world and can be the catalyst for this region’s economic recovery.
Comments? Andy Coyne, Insider
