The SME engagement session involved lively and stimulating descriptions of three different styles of engagement, from three different sorts of organisation, from three different countries. Aston University's system is strongly embedded into the procedures, with relevant KPIs for all, driven from the top down by a highly motivated, ex-industry, Vice Chancellor.
Private sector organisations have experienced significant commercial benefits as a result of adopting and embracing customer relationship management (CRM) practices. Some have found value in simply structuring, formalising, prioritising and planning their customer contact. Others have taken CRM to its fullest extent: segmenting markets by present and future value, prioritising investment accordingly and designing customised contact and account management programmes that successfully encompass very extensive and often fragmented customer bases.
On a glorious afternoon, a group of us were fortunate to visit the IBM site in Dublin. We started our visit in the IBM Innovation Centre, hearing form our host Noel Crawford about the history of the site, and how it has developed from a manufacturing facility to the technology campus it is today.
Prof. Mullins opened his talk by challenging two widely held assumptions about the creation of new businesses. Described by him as “centrepieces” they were:
Sometimes it is good to go back to basics. In the conference’s opening plenary David Bott challenged some fundamental assumptions about how linear the relationship is between the type of world class science for which the UK is rightly applauded and the derivation of innovative products and services from such innovation – an area where he believes the evidence for our world class standing is perhaps less compelling.
In this talk, Professor Reid explored why there has been such a focus in recent years on reviewing university-business collaborations. The talk included:
A movement took hold in academia at the dawn of the 20th century. It spread its wings, exploded twice, then emerged into the technological civilisation we inhabit. This movement today we call ‘impact’ is underpinned by a fundamental motive – in return for funding and support, research conducted at universities should provide positive benefit to society.
Probably the most effective means to this end is by taking ideas cultivated in academia and incorporating them into the development of technologies which can enhance health, wellbeing, the environment and economy.
Intellectual property are knowledge assets that both universities and business create, but to own and manage these assets they require legal rights.
When most people think of IP they think of the rights that attribute ownership rather than of the knowledge content of the asset. Intellectual property rights typically take the form of a document, such as patents or copyrights, that describes the knowledge content and attributes ownership of the asset.
Strategic alliances are high on the government’s and funders’ agendas. Significant industrial engagement is often critical to get investment for strategic university projects. Universities and industry have been collaborating for over a century; indeed many of our universities were originally established to address pre-competitive business and industrial questions. Over the last decade there have been a number of reviews calling for more and better university-industry collaboration. But what makes for a good strategic partnership?