Building industrial engagement and impact

Sponsor:
Professor Matthias Ruth, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research

Key contacts:
Professor Sarah Thompson, Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research)
Amanda Selvaratnam, Associate Director (Business and Knowledge Exchange) Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange

What are we transforming?

By expanding and improving our industrial engagement, we will increase the influence our research has on economic prosperity whilst providing wider benefits to society, culture and the environment. 

We will be known for our ambitious and effective industry engagement, and the value we place on this, and we will emphasise the importance of building and sustaining long-term, strategic partnerships across all three faculties.

Achieving this ambition requires investment and culture change to ensure that the value we place on this activity is clear and effectively supported. We will work with the academic and professional service community to identify areas of strength and to design and test our approach to delivering new ways of engaging with existing and new industrial partners.

We will improve all forms of industry engagement including collaborative and contract research, consultancy, continuing professional development and access to our specialist facilities. We will ultimately transform our approach to:

• academic appointments, leadership, career paths and rewards for working with industry
• planning, creating, growing and managing industry partnerships
• communicating our potential and co-creating projects with industry
• supporting engagement through specialist staffing, systems and processes.

This approach will ensure our reputation is enhanced not only with industry, but also with our potential students and other research collaborators and partners.

Latest update

During its first two years, the BIEI programme has established the infrastructure and support mechanisms to deliver and grow industry engagement. The highlights from the first two years include;

• A strategic academic recruitment campaign was launched to recruit new academics with a focus on engaging with businesses across different sectors. Seven new appointments were made through this campaign.
• A newly appointed Business Development team is providing additional support and resources to develop and manage partnerships between academic departments and potential industry partners.
• The University of York has joined the Northern Accelerator, a partnership aimed at creating businesses and high-value jobs across the North East.
• A new internal fund to support ambitious new partnership projects to accelerate their development has been launched and several projects have been awarded funding through this. 

The priorities for this year are to

• Further develop the new business development team, the institution wide Community of Practice and associated tools and support for staff.
• Provide support for growth through the further roll-out of our partnership development framework to provide improved relationship management support for our partners.
• Review our processes and policies to support staff to engage with industry and update to provide greater clarity and consistency.
• Further scoping and eventual roll out of a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This system will assist with the tracking and management of our external partners to ensure we can offer a professional, joined-up service and maximise opportunities for cross-selling.