Partnerships for Progress

Partnerships for Progress Universities, Colleges and local Businesses working together through technology

A synthesis of the Jisc BCE Open Innovation and Access to Resources initiative

Acknowledgements This resource was jointly written by the Jisc Services Business and Community Engagement Team: Caroline Ingram, Rob Allen, Marc Dobson and Andrew Stewart.

Simon Whittemore, Jisc BCE programme manager, conceived the initiative and wrote the calls for proposals, as well as overseeing the work on behalf of Jisc.

The projects were supported by Jisc Netskills, in particular Will Allen, and the Jisc Services BCE team, as well as by a group of critical friends. With thanks to all the critical friends for their invaluable guidance, expertise and experience; in the first phase Chris Batt OBE, Carl Clayton, Uwe Derksen, John Dolan OBE, Brian McCaul, George Munroe and Nigel Spencer; and for the second phase Chris Batt OBE, John Dolan OBE, George Munroe and Nigel Spencer. The Support and Synthesis team do not feel that the results of the initiative would have been as valuable without their rich contributions. Special thanks to Chris Batt for writing the foreword to this document.

Index Foreword

1

Executive summary

3

Background

5

Outcomes

7

Effective internal collaboration and engagement

7

Effective end user engagement

10

Innovation—new routes to market

12

Increased access to knowledge and expertise for new audiences

15

Effecting an institutional change

18

Future implications for Open Innovation and Access to Resources

22

Strategies to maximise value

22

What institutions should consider – calls to action!

23

Jisc BCE OIA2R principles

25

Project descriptions

26

Phase 1 (2010/11)

26

Phase 2 (2012/13)

27

References and links to other relevant resources

30

Foreword Chris Batt OBE As a Director of Cultural Services, as project leader for the People’s Network Project and finally as the CEO of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Chris Batt has been involved in the development of local, national and international projects designed to open up services through technology to the widest possible audiences and to encourage direct engagement by those communities. He is currently a consultant and PhD Researcher at University College London.

Welcome to the synthesis report for the Open Innovation and Access to Resources initiative (OIA2R); an Aladdin’s Cave of innovative projects that offer tantalising glimpses of the future benefits of mutual engagement between universities and the communities that surround them, re-engineering worldviews.

While engagement beyond the boundaries of the institution has been embedded in the strategic priorities of higher education for some years, the meaning and value of engagement has not always been well understood.

The National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) suggests that it “...generates mutual benefit - with all parties learning from each other through sharing knowledge, expertise and skills”1. Jisc’s Business and Community Engagement Programme (BCE) has a mandate to translate such aspirations into practical, technology enabled, sustainable applications; to use techniques like open innovation and wider access to resources as the means to achieve long-term socially and economically significant objectives. OIA2R projects were, thus, funded to develop new online platforms to remix and evolve academic and business knowledge systems, community relationships and social networks of exchange, to demonstrate the practical value of innovative and sustainable mutual engagement.

Partnerships for Progress

Following the successful funding of eight OIA2R projects in 2011, the second phase was launched in 2012 with emphasis on the creation of demonstrators using web technologies to address known problems or market opportunities. This created a very practical and outcomes-focused point of departure. In addition, projects were required to place emphasis on links with local and sectoral strategic objectives and the plans of Local Enterprise Partnerships, underlining the importance of understanding the needs and aspirations of communities for the earliest stages of the development.

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Beyond this practical demonstration of innovation within a place-based or topic-based community, Jisc required the projects to show the potential for transferability across regions and nationally. This might be either through the opening up of the demonstrator service for others to use directly or through the availability of the open source code for other institutions and communities to use within their own local or regional setting.

Great examples of the potential economies of scale and benefits of wider knowledge sharing are to be found in the case studies that follow. The real importance of the process of synthesis is to shine a light on the long-term potential that the demonstrators 1

https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/CBL%20literature%20review.pdf

offer while, at the same time, illuminating the practical challenges that have been and will be faced by those involved in making engagement work to mutual benefit.

It has been the task of the four critical friends involved in this second phase to fulfil a number of roles; sometimes interpreters of requirements and priorities, sometimes negotiators, sometimes offering an external perspective and just occasionally acting as the third umpire. One thing upon which we all agree is that at no time has there been any need to urge greater motivation. Both project teams and the Jisc managers were highly energised and energising throughout. They could see, as I believe the reader will realise from reading this synthesis report, just how much mutual value can be created by stronger community engagement and what potential that offers us all for a sustainable and better future.

Partnerships for Progress

The publication of this report, following so quickly on the heels of the Witty Report, with its recommendations on the dynamic relationship between the academy and SMEs to build economic growth, could not be timelier. ‘Partnerships for Progress’ provides an essential building block for the delivery of the British Invention Revolution.

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Executive summary Existing and emerging technologies have an instrumental role in helping higher and further education (HE/FE) institutions compete for partnership and commercialisation opportunities. Establishing simple platforms and communication channels to encourage and improve the effectiveness of co-developing ideas has been shown by some projects, within a year of inception, to have brought about cost savings, and efficiency gains. This type of improvement can bring agility to institutions to better thrive in a competitive environment.

The objectives behind the initiative were to create good practice in: Effective HE/FE-led provision-in partnership of information and knowledge services online to business and community organisations and individuals, especially SMEs Achieving impact and benefits from HE/FE led open innovation marketplaces and creating new business opportunities from online co-development with external parties Innovative institutional exploitation of digital media and web technologies to enhance innovation, business growth and sustainability, and knowledge exploitation The universities and colleges involved in this initiative led partnerships with businesses, especially SMEs, and representative local government bodies. The local nature of those partnerships, for the purposes of running an innovative project, does not conflict with either the transferability of the solutions to other contexts, or the online dynamic of the solutions outlined below.

From a business point of view, determining whether an institution has the knowledge or expertise they need is often difficult and requires significant input from the University.

Anything that can be done to simplify the process should lead to new, potentially fruitful collaborations, consultancy opportunities and ultimately income. Again, simplicity was key, targeting improving access to information and knowledge resources for external parties.

The good practice gathered during the projects has resulted in a series of calls to action.

These capture the lessons and identify points that can be taken into consideration by institutions wishing to enable better collaboration with external partners with regard to innovation and access to resources. They fall into a number of broad categories: Identifying and assessing new project or change opportunities Actions 7, 8, 11

Partnerships for Progress

Managing the project effectively to maximise the efficiency of internal institutional partnerships Actions 1, 2, 3, 4, 15, 16

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Effective use of technology and existing platforms Actions 6, 7, 10, 12, 13 Effective engagement with external communities Actions 5, 13,14 Effective and innovative partnership with other HEIs Actions 7, 8, 9, 10

Achieving the online co-development of ideas is a tall order. Barriers include the issue of trust. Projects have had to work hard with their engaged users to overcome this and put in safeguards within their systems to protect the people and intellectual property involved but still allow innovation to flourish.

The portfolio of projects has demonstrated evidence of the growing role of the higher and further education sector in innovation, business growth and knowledge exploitation.

The benefits of this intervention are: enhanced access for SMEs, entrepreneurs and other external parties to information and knowledge, innovation and collaboration opportunities which can help inform, improve, develop or sustain their business or venture; for example, Retail Climate, prior to the official launch of their service, reached out to and engaged 50+ retailers across the Dyfi Biosphere as well as 16 in Exeter, in identifying a substantial set of business opportunities which exist due to climate change enhanced institutional capability across the sector to lead the provision of online information and knowledge services on behalf of a wider collaborative partnership utilising existing local networks for example, the myKE project led a project involving two universities and the knowledge intensive businesses on ‘Corridor Manchester’, covering some 243 hectares with a 55,000 strong workforce; and for the Humber Open project, Hull College linked together grant, tender and contract opportunities across the Humber Enterprise Zone, the largest in the country, with a recent input of £30 Million through the Regional Growth Fund and, enhanced institutional capability across the sector to derive value and generate innovation opportunities from online marketplaces, and enhanced support, resources and opportunities for institutions’ own innovators for example, Open LivIn, at Liverpool John Moores University can now match early-stage ideas and technologies from universities, companies and lone investors to business development expertise and funding. Seven Uk universities are already signed up to the Innovation Commons network, and 11 more are in the process of joining

It is anticipated that the funding supplied to these projects will have served to pump prime sustainable solutions for the long term, not only in the areas in which the funding was applied, but nationally. Following the ‘calls to action’ could result in individuals and institutions effecting a positive change locally. A further outcome is a set of ten good practice principles to be implemented when engaging with external partners for open innovation and improving access to resources. At first glance these may appear similar to the calls to action, however, they are intended to underpin your open innovation or access to resources initiative, and reflect the more practical advice contained in the action points.

Partnerships for Progress

Using technology to link HE/FE institutions to their external partners has been shown to be effective if a sufficiently engaging approach is taken. Carefully managed engagement was key in the most successful projects, not relying on a “build it and they will come approach”.

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Background Jisc had a dual purpose in funding 20 projects to explore the use of innovative web technologies for Open Innovation and Access to Resources. First, to improve access to information, knowledge and development opportunities for all information providers (universities, colleges and businesses). And second, to enhance the institutional role in facilitating and generating innovation through partnership and collaboration with business. It was intended that the benefits and lessons learnt would be felt by both the funded institutions, their partners and the external businesses and community groups they engaged with.

The recent Witty report has made recommendations about the potential for universities to enhance economic growth, in particular through engagement with businesses.

Witty has called for “collaborative projects to develop new technologies”. These ‘Arrow Projects’ will involve collaboration between key research centres, their Local Enterprise Partnerships and private sector partners. In common with the Jisc OIA2R initiative, Witty is seeking to incentivise universities to seek out innovative SMEs to offer them support with technology, expertise and know-how. Witty states (para 4.23),”So what is needed is not to create a model of closer engagement, but for universities and LEPs to build on examples of effective working that already exist…”; here we present some suitable models.

Businesses benefit from partnering with universities2. Businesses which interact with universities and colleges are more likely to improve the quality of their goods and services, improve their labour productivity, increase their range of goods and services and more than twice as likely to open new markets or increase their market share compared to those businesses that don’t interact3.

All the projects shared a set of common themes: 1. A focus on local and regional partnerships and engaging end users 2. Developing an engaging demonstrator service or platform 3. Working their service into institutional strategy - selling the “collaborative capital” to create value from the partnerships developed 4. To transfer their ideas, lessons learnt, and potentially service, elsewhere

Partnerships for Progress

All of the projects were trying to achieve technology inspired change. The focus for the project teams was, for the most part, less on the technological features of access to resources and open innovation and more on the partnership opportunities, new business models and approaches to engagement which enabled innovation. Funding enabled the institutions to pilot new ways of enhancing access to external partners to information and knowledge, innovation and collaboration opportunities

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The projects were encouraged to engage with partners to deliver their demonstrator services. These included Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), SMEs, and other business and community organisations. LEPs are business‐led organisations with an economic growth objective. Although at an early stage of development they have the potential to be invaluable in helping universities play a central role in driving local economic development, especially in supporting the challenging SME market. SMEs make a very significant contribution to the UK economy. They represent 99.8 percent of all A Review of Business–University Collaboration, Professor Sir Tim Wilson DL, February 2012 Lambert Review of Business - University Collaboration, HM Treasury 2003 4 Statistical release: Business population estimates for UK and Regions 2012, Department of Business, Innovation and Skills 2 3

enterprises and 59.1 percent of private sector employment, with approximately ÂŁ1.5 billion turnover, or 48.8 percent of private sector turnover at the start of 20124.

The Jisc projects were also funded to enhance their local support, resources and opportunities to facilitate innovation internally. The institutions themselves were expected to lead the collaborative partnerships that would develop services to improve access to relevant resources, or provide an online collaborative space in which innovation could occur.

The lessons included in this synthesis have been identified as arising from the projects.

In some cases they were learnt and then applied by the projects; in other cases there wasn’t time for these projects to benefit from the learning within the project lifetime.

Overall the synthesis reflects on what the projects have achieved and how other institutions might be able to effect a change in this area without necessarily having a large amount of funding to do so. All the projects were innovative, using web technology to create new opportunities and partnerships.

Partnerships for Progress

A list of the projects funded through this initiative, including a relevant link to their output can be found on pages 26-29.

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Outcomes Effective internal collaboration and engagement Some organisations and stakeholders see publicly expressing an interest in tenders, ideas or collaboration opportunities as a threat to their commercial confidentiality. One of the major challenges encountered across both access and innovation projects was scepticism around sharing opportunities online, which is a threat to effective collaboration. This had previously been highlighted in the Facilitating Open Innovation landscape study, which led, in part, to this initiative. It is as much a factor for the delivery partners as for the end-users. This challenge impacted on the features deployed by at least three of the projects (e.g. in the final version of Humber Open, and the design of the MEGS-KT and mOBILE project platforms), but they all found innovative ways to overcome it.

The nature of Humber Open required the project team to take many roles, including as marketers, advising on funding and partnership managers. Hull College advised that the sooner you engage with partners who will develop, deliver and promote your service the more accelerated the success. Institutions have staff appointed to key roles in marketing, partnership and funding. They should be brought into innovation development as early as possible to utilise their existing knowledge. Hull College further promoted success in engaging with external partners through its use of a simple engagement platform.

The full platform including data, plugins and sample skins is available for any other organisation to deploy or adapt (e.g. www.futurehull.org).

“I have been fortunate to work with commercial team at Hull College and I have gained valuable insight into how projects are ‘commercialised’ and how internally the College senior leadership team reviews and scores projects and calculates risk.”

Tom Tomlinson, Humber Open Project Manager

Partnerships for Progress

Open LivIn has developed a social network platform - The Innovation Commons - a city region-wide innovation and intellectual property (IP) marketplace for maximising the exploitation of early-stage ideas. They used crowd-sourcing techniques for project selection, and carried out ‘match-making’ to link ideas with people. They recruited entrepreneur-consultants, who shared a clear consensus that The Innovation Commons provides the opportunity for new business whilst reducing the cost of securing new business. The entrepreneur-consultants were also interested in cross-referrals of work within the trusted community, joint bidding for projects, and further proposed a quality/certification for Innovation Commons members (possibly in conjunction with an institution such as the Institute for Knowledge Transfer). The project was at pains to avoid the ‘build it and they will come’ approach, stating, “if anything we have erred on the community development side of things - ensuring the community works, before transferring activity over to a new platform. Hence we have 80+ entrepreneurconsultants and we have tested a number of key hypotheses to ensure that the community and process works before hard-wiring it.”

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“The Innovation Commons ... led to ConnauTech Ltd work on a range of new and interesting projects that we may not have been involved in previously.”

Danny Connaughton, MD ConnauTech Ltd

“...since joining I’ve already developed a series of interesting new collaborations with universities I hadn’t previously worked with.”

Kish Mistry, MD Company Doctor Direct Ltd

“Anything that helps engineer the right connections and new business with a reduced effort has to be good. The Innovation Commons has done that for me.”

Cath Whitaker, MD Team Services

Ingenuity KnowledgeHub Innovative technology-enabled effective internal collaboration and engagement Ingenuity KnowledgeHub brought together a disparate group of internal and external partners to work collaboratively. They enabled ‘hard to reach’ local businesses to engage with the University, share and advise each other using a “Fishbowl” service. The project exceeded expectation in its engagement with the University’s central Communications and Marketing team, and learnt some important lessons in how to use and engage with Institutional marketing. It also supported the extension of the mandate at senior level for a University wide Ingenuity programme for small business engagement activities.

The IKH project forged valuable and sustainable internal partnerships within the University of Nottingham. These were based on a shared aim to achieve parts of the University’s strategic plan, including improved engagement with local communities and creating support for local business and industry. The project team drew together internal departments on the common theme of knowledge transfer, to enhance understanding of “different cultures of working between all partners.

We all learnt from each other and learnt what drivers we are working to”.

Statistics show increased numbers of subscribers on the Ingenuity service mailing list, some of which can be attributed to project. Fishbowl content was successful in its reach, and there was a marked increase in January statistics for the main Ingenuity website. Over the year there were 200 more members, despite the usual January clear-out where people traditionally review their membership and numbers decrease. The team also embedded a ‘Discover’ search tool into the Ingenuity website; the search engine will develop and learn through use over time: in April 60% more websites were submitted for trawling.

There is also some evidence of business-to-business networking and benefit for participating businesses. The Twitter community has taken off, with businesses running it themselves. From their point of view they have ‘spun off’ from the University by creating their own microbiz support community called #RippleRound, e.g.:

In spite of all this success, the project team concluded that the challenge of changing culture across a whole institution is too big for a project of this type and length. Indicators are that while the Fishbowl works effectively as a platform that can be transferred to different context, it could be more effective with a narrower focus which might make it easier to identify the university or departmental stake in the Fishbowl. It has exposed other areas of the institution to a new form of community building which they are planning to explore through their own Fishbowls, particularly in looking at content marketing and use of social media. Learning Technologies and Community Partnerships teams in the University have expressed interest in the ‘Fishbowl’ concept.

Consideration of the tools available to you to facilitate better internal working can be included in early planning to set up a partnership working project.

Partnerships for Progress

Sarah Dale @creatingfocus, 23 May [2013] “If it’s useful, here are my thoughts which I wrote as a post for #uonfishbowl http://fishbowl.ingenuitygateway.com/read-all-about-it-connecting-your-tribe … #rippleround”

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Challenges in achieving effective partnership (a) Recruitment and team building Getting the technical development team in place was a significant challenge for more than one project. Projects can be naive about the time it can take to find the person or team with the necessary skills to carry out the innovative development required. Further, in at least two instances the response of the institution to recruitment of posts within the project significantly delayed work starting or progressing. Institutions also need to take some responsibility to facilitate swift turnaround by support services, as they depend so much on research and time-limited contracts.

Action 1.

Make sure you understand your institutional processes and procedures in advance of funding being awarded so you can get started straight away.

(b) Leadership It was observed that a “prime mover”, who bid for the funding and presented the “bigger picture”, often then passed the project management to someone else. Critical friends to these projects commented that occasionally the project manager lacked the experience or status to be able to take the project out of research and into innovation to effect a change.

Action 2.

Be prepared to commit to see your idea through to fruition; someone else may not be able to realise your vision.

(c) Innovation versus Research Innovation projects should necessarily involve significant change, and therefore be quite different to research projects. The sector is not practised at doing innovation projects.

They call for different skills like negotiation, facilitation,external engagement and rapid collaboration with new parties.

Action 3.

Make sure your team understands the innovative nature of the work; prepare others for change and making best use of technology to support activity.

(d) Avoiding isolation

Partnerships for Progress

Many of the project managers were isolated within their institution. This is true of anyone trying to lead change, but is doubly challenging in the face of received methods and assumptions in university practice. Project managers for this kind of development need to be able to take on the role of “change leader”. Their competencies need to include those mentioned above, combining into key skills in community engagement and management.

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Action 4.

Understand the challenges you may face, and gain senior support early on for your ideas; your funder believes in your ideas, while you may need to convince your institutional management.

“Each turn of the process and each step in scaling up the community have presented more challenging tasks in community management. These skills extend to all aspects of managing a community and marketplace – including tactics on optimising campaigns, animating consultants and post-project allocation management.”

Emma Nolan, Open LivIn Project Manager and IP & Commercialisation Manager, Liverpool John Moores University

Effective end user engagement The Access to Resources strand of the Jisc initiative set out to explore the potential for technology to enhance support, resources and opportunities between institutions (and their partners) and their target sector. The projects were encouraged to establish an identified need or clear opportunity for which they deliver benefit to the users.

A number of particular challenges exist when engaging with small to medium size enterprises (SMEs). Barriers previously identified included the (perceived) lack of available time from small and micro-businesses needed to engage with university projects5, and ‘discovery’ - how to find and assess information6. Although recent statistics7 suggest that university engagement with SMEs is increasing, the lack of information literacy skills is a serious social and economic disadvantage. CILIP’s definition: “Information literacy is knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner”, remains appropriate and there is work on this in the HE sector by SCONUL. The recent Witty review of Universities and Growth encourages institutions to put in place a single point of entry for SMEs that identifies their needs and leads them to relevant support and resources. Witty also urges universities to drive up SEM demand and engagement and work with external partners across their locality. SMEs may require a tailored approach through different communication channels and active participation, and institutions need an in-depth understanding of the motivations and frustrations that SMEs experience8. With this in mind, the OIA2R projects set out to pilot approaches to improve engagement with SME end users through effective use of technology.

From engagement to real collaboration

At Aberystwyth University, project partners the Dyfi Biosphere Partnership showed growing influence across the region’s retailers (now more than 50) through offering services such a free energy audit and by building a retailer database. Another partner, the climate science consultancy CCRM, increased their profile nationally among UK retailers, and the project has worked with 16 retailers in Exeter. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/bce/stream4resfinalreport.pdf http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/aboutus/workinggroups/greyliteraturereport.pdf 7 Higher Education – Business and Community Interaction Survey: 2011-12 8 JISC Business and Community Engagement (BCE) programme: Access to Resources and Open Innovation 5 6

Partnerships for Progress

Loughborough University, through their Midlands Energy Graduate School and the Midlands Energy Consortium, examined the business development needs and networking skills of SMEs in the energy sector in their MEGS-KT project. Having established a sense of community with these SMEs, they provided a series of lectures and social networking activities, leading to an e-learning environment for CPD. Attendees at events were not just businesses but also local householders, whose drivers varied, some thinking there may even be opportunities in reducing energy bills. Conversations during the events have led to proposed initiatives between the University and partners.

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Retail Climate Targeting technology-enabled end user engagement The Retail Climate project at Aberystwyth University aimed to assist the retail sector, in particular SMEs, to take advantage of market opportunities created by climate change. They recognised that SMEs are unable or unwilling to give up time to engage with universities without a compelling business case that benefited their business directly. Retail Climate set out to persuade them by addressing a series of barriers to end user engagement.

“I hadn’t given global warming any thought before. To be honest, I half expected to be sold something but my fears quickly disappeared when I went through the information. Luckily there aren’t any catches and I now realise energy efficiency is more than changing a lightbulb. This is definitely food for thought and I wish I’d found Retail Climate earlier. Definitely worth it.”

Greg Mann, Managing Director, Kitchen Works, Anglesey

Communications - targeting and profiling A key success factor for the project was to focus their communications around clear business benefits for the SMEs, such as profitability, reducing costs, reputational gain and new opportunities.

For each factor they provided, through their website, examples of specific business benefits, online questionnaires to produce a tailored profile, and examples of how other businesses have recognised the opportunities available. The core “marketing message” of Retail Climate to SMEs was that climate change is a business opportunity and they provided a digital tool to help retailers set a business vision for climate change, linked to goals and targets.

“I had no idea climate change was such a business opportunity before I signed up to Retail Climate. I can now see its marketing potential and for the first time ever I’m looking forward to our energy bill! I can’t wait to see our bills go down and our staff seem happier too.”

Fiona Hancock, Fashion Boutique owner, Vanity Collection, Norwich

The online platform developed by Retail Climate provided highly targeted resources to match the specific needs of the retailer, with criteria including business model, size of business and location. The underlying technology used a series of algorithms to retrieve resources from a database based around the customised profile, referred to as “depth tailoring”.

Providing businesses with relevant resources is critical to engaging them effectively, technology can provide quick and easy access to profiling methods.

Changing attitudes - avoiders and doubters

Partnerships for Progress

Another criteria used for profiling was attitudes of the retailer toward climate change. Different segments were identified including “avoiders” and “doubters”, and drawing from Jisc process for “evidencing change” they produced their own communications targeted at the different attitude groups. Data gathered during the project will help inform the success of ‘converting sceptics’ in this sector.

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An additional technique adopted at Aberystwyth to encourage behavioural change stems from social learning theory - with the use of a “pledge” tool to increase commitment to change initiatives such as “zero carbon”.

Background data to support such a commitment was enabled through an online carbon footprinting tool.

An in-depth understanding of your market and what drives their behaviour can be highly beneficial, consider how online tools can help capture and analyse this information.

Catalytic individuals Retail Climate sought testimonials and endorsements from “ambassadors” which are featured on their website to demonstrate the benefits to end users. MEGS-KT at Loughborough University similarly found that “catalytic” individuals from energy businesses were effective in attracting other SMEs to events. These inspiring individuals, perceived as successful entrepreneurs, were instrumental in driving both attendance and also productive discussion at the events, further enhanced through an active twitter presence. Behaviour change was core to both MEGS-KT and Retail Climate, seeking examples of people (“change makers”) who are recognised as influencing others to change their thinking or behaviour.

Action 5.

Think about who the key individuals are in your sector, and how you might capitalise on their enthusiasm for using technology effectively.

A question of trust Both MEGS-KT and Retail Climate had difficulty in mass recruiting end user SMEs, finding a need to build trust through one-to-one relationships9, 10. Initially adopting a strategy using a series of workshops, Retail Climate switched to one-to-one interviews at the retailers’ own premises to put across their case in a more tailored approach. Coupled with this they provided literature such as posters with more detailed information for the retailer to read at their convenience. Postcards distributed made use of Google Analytics to track response behaviour.

Action 6.

Online tools can help demonstrate to you which of your engagement activities are really paying off and are worth investing in; make sure you are collecting the relevant data.

Innovation - new routes to market Jisc supports the role open innovation can play across HE/FE with a focus on the use of technology, enabling the co-development of ideas and services with external individuals/ organisations.

These Jisc BCE Open Innovation projects explored the way in which online platforms or marketplaces can facilitate innovation, in particular in terms of co-development of ideas.

At this early stage, it is difficult to say whether the projects have achieved systemic, or embedded, innovation. However the technologies and solutions employed by some of them have certainly opened up new routes to market. In particular this was achieved through:

Further, the Open Innovation projects have certainly made the HE/FE institutions involved more relevant to society. One critical friend described this as innovative in itself!

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http://www.ub-cooperation.eu/pdf/final_report.pdf http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/bce/facilitatingopeninnovationstudyfinalreport.pdf

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Partnerships for Progress

1. Improved access to resources across the partners 2. New methods of engagement/collaboration between HE/FE and SMEs

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The Infusion Factory Capitalising on technology-enabled improved access to resources Within the sector we tend to think of access to resources as improving the access external organisations have to our research. The typical solution to that problem tends to be the development of a “portal” which, if well thought through, can be very successful. One project that shone in this initiative took that one step further, and focused on how they could better facilitate the transactional process of searching for and hiring resources, equipment and skills across the University through a portal.

The Infusion Factory was addressing a clear need. Over the course of two years multiple businesses had approached York St John University (YSJU) to enquire about access to resources including, but not limited to, equipment such as 3D prototyping, AV recording space, and expertise on music, video and text for content.

Provision for these resources was disparate, un-managed and not formally identified or recorded and although some successful interactions resulted they were not timely enough for commercial application.

“One of the aims of the university is to make maximum use of capital assets over and above the teaching timetable. There are many occasions where equipment can be utilised by external businesses to help them develop and the Infusion Factory is a very useful ‘window’ for us to make these resources available. By listing items it allows us to achieve many things.”

John Woolsey, Head Technician, York St. John University

The portal provides a method for businesses to engage with YSJU at multiple service levels, utilising student, technical or academic staff to access and manage equipment and content if needed.

This provides YSJU with benefits to educational programmes, staff experience and consultancy also raising knowledge transfer levels and student-business interactions. It has stimulated innovation and cross-fertilisation and YSJU is developing closer ties with the business community.

The Infusion Factory currently exists as a prototype and is being developed further by York St. John University. Their most valuable achievement, similar to many successful projects, has been to develop a clear process – in this case around the ‘transactional customer journey’. This was made a reality through the development of the Infusion Factory as a Wordpress site.

Innovative methods of engagement/collaboration The projects are innovative in their own right, especially with regard to the way they have applied existing technology in new contexts. One of the biggest drivers of open innovation across the projects has been the adoption of new approaches to engage and collaborate with those external to universities and colleges driven by technology. (a) Co-development

Partnerships for Progress

The REALISE project developed an online platform that is helping to take ideas, relating to assistive technologies, through the incubation stage into the delivery of a project. In doing so it has helped to create links between businesses, education, employment and health professionals. The platform is also available to anyone to contribute ideas that might help someone who has a disability or help those professionals working on assistive technologies.

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Action 7.

Consider whether you have an area that could benefit from co-development, and adopt a platform that has already been developed.

(b) Shared data MyMobileBristol is an excellent example of what can be achieved using publicly owned data. The team developed a mobile-friendly site by linking University data with transport data owned by the City Council. The application provides users with relevant up-to-date campus information.

Action 8.

Think about your own data; what could be achieved if it was open or combined with other suppliers’ data to provide new service user solutions and opportunities.

(c) Innovation commons Using an approach developed by the Innovation Commons, a tried and tested method helping to create effective collaborative business opportunities, Liverpool John Moores University can now match early-stage ideas and technologies from universities, companies and lone investors to business development expertise and funding. The Innovation Commons describes itself as “a thriving marketplace with a history of delivering commercial success”.

Action 9.

With seven UK universities already signed up, and another 11 in the process of joining, your institution could consider becoming part of the Innovation Commons network.

“...I find it hard to think how we used to achieve much commercially without access to this kind of resource.”

Emma Nolan, Open LivIn Project Manager and IP & Commercialisation Manager, Liverpool John Moores University

OPEN Biz Using technology to enable Scottish Universities to engage with business OPEN Biz explored new methods to engage online with businesses in the rural South-West of Scotland. They increased awareness of the benefits of engaging with Scottish Universities to access knowledge, expertise and facilities. They encouraged SMEs to deliver new products processes or services in collaboration with university partners.

The project learnt from Interface’s face to face interactions with businesses, taking what worked and applying it into the design of online technologies. Use of technology increased access to, and availability and visibility of, Scottish University expertise. They also promoted the benefits of collaboration through a series of case studies.

OPEN Biz explored a range of online tools to raise awareness of their services and engage businesses more effectively, including: • Short video case studies via YouTube • Online events in the form of webinars to facilitate attendance

• The development of an iPhone application to more effectively facilitate discoverability Local businesses gained an increased understanding of how knowledge exchange could benefit their company leading to collaborative partnerships with academic institutions. It also enabled partner universities to engage with more businesses across a wider area in the West of Scotland.

Partnerships for Progress

• A publications list service with business friendly search features and topic modelling to help business understand what is available to them

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Increased access to knowledge and expertise for new audiences OIA2R aimed to create new marketplaces for institutions, and open up their offer to new audiences. It was a condition of funding that projects ensured a local focus on their audiences.

By their nature, institutions harbour a vast amount of knowledge. A significant amount of knowledge is of potential value and benefit to external partners in business and the wider community. Challenges exist in making these external partners aware that such information exists, and providing an easy route of access to knowledge. A Jisc commissioned study by the British Library on business information provision in the UK found that many obstacles exist to prevent businesses from finding and using business information. A lack of understanding of business needs by staff providing services was also cited frequently as a problem.

Encapsulate Using web technology to increase access to knowledge and experience Encapsulate is an example of tailoring an existing platform to address the needs of a new audience by allowing businesses to access University expertise. In a partnership between the University of Essex and the University of Glasgow, the project interfaced the VentureNavigator online business support service (hosted by University of Essex) with the Enlighten digital repository of research at University of Glasgow. This resulted in a light-touch service to connect businesses to HE research and advice.

The main driver for the project was to address the difficulty a business has in finding out “who does what� within universities when they are seeking support, as this is reported by businesses as a barrier to engaging with HEIs. Within the business community there is an understanding that universities hold knowledge and expertise that may be valuable to them. How they determine if an institution has the knowledge they need is often difficult and requires significant input from a University employee.

The Encapsulate pilot seeks to address this issue by providing a simple interface in which a business describes its current and future operations and is matched to research conducted by Glasgow. The project is intended to be transferable to other institutions using the EPrints repository software or other similar tools identified by the project, and also highlights best practice in data management for other institutions considering similar services.

The plugin allows exporting of EPrints data to XML, suitable for use with external systems including Venture Navigator. By plugging into EPrints and contributing to the EPrints open source repository, Encapsulate has gained access to an existing market of hundreds of universities as the plugin can be taken and used elsewhere to improve processes.

A number of discussions have taken place regarding transfer of Encapsulate to other sites. The Open Source Digital repository service used by Glasgow (EPrints) is used at a large number of other UK institutions, so the pilot created by this project has strong potential to create other opportunities within the sector.

Partnerships for Progress

The transferability of Encapsulate was explored in detail at a Transferability Workshop in January 2013 involving the University of Warwick, London School of Economics and University of Essex. The project also formed links with the OpenBiz project hosted at Interface - in the pilot users are signposted to the Interface service well as specific video and learning material specific to their planned activities.

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The project was fortunate to have access to a pre-existing EPrints user group that represented transferability candidates. These sites represent 3 chosen to participate from the larger EPrints User Group. They were chosen to give a good spread of size, type and location of HEI. The attendees expressed interest in the work and agreed it would be transferable. All of the EPrints sites taking part also expressed a desire to improve the way that data was themed and categorised within their repositories.

Action 10.

Where appropriate, make use of and contribute to established repositories (such as EPrints) to maximise reach. Technologies and platforms which already have a well established developer base can prove a useful source of assistance during implementation.

A study by Rightscom for Jisc on the Online Promotion of Research Expertise also found that University web sites are generally not designed in an optimal way for external users to discover the expertise of researchers. Universities have some way to go in maximising the utility of information about their researchers.

Opening up access to institutional knowledge brings benefits for both the external partners through increased access to information which can be commercially or socially advantageous, but also to the institution through increased opportunities for collaboration.

Humber Open Adapting technology to enable knowledge sharing with local economic partners The Hull and Humber Open Innovation project, which has created the Humber Open Platform, is dedicated to the search and retrieval of regional funding information. The aim of the platform is to enable businesses, schools, colleges, universities and local authorities within the Humber region to identify opportunities for collaboration based on government and regional initiatives. The Humber Open website has a database consisting of over 900 funding opportunities provided by over 220 agencies and funding bodies. There are over 1,700 supporting documents for the opportunities, and these figures are continuing to increase as more opportunities aggregate to the platform.

This platform has been extremely successful and has been deployed in two other different settings through the Future Hull and Humber Local Economic Partnership sites. As a result the project has demonstrated that the platform can be easily adopted by other organisations with minimal effort to reach a range of audiences.

www.futurehull.org

The project is already achieving transferability through the following initial platform adopters: Local Enterprise Partnership www.humberlep.org Hull College Commercial www.hull-college.ac.uk/employers

www.humberopen.org

Hull City Council www.hullcc.gov.uk The Renewables Network www.renewablesnetwork.co.uk Chamber of Commerce www.hull-humber-chamber.co.uk

www.lep.humberopen.org

By using a well established development platform (in this case WordPress following a review of available platforms), supported by a large developer community and an extensive resource library, deploying additional web platforms based on Humber Open was relatively quick and easy to complete.

Partnerships for Progress

Bondholders Hull www.hull.co.uk/bondholders

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The following outcomes have been achieved as a result of their project: • 15% increase in SME activity with renewables tenders across the Humber region • 2% increase in local companies winning national tenders • 700-900 hours decrease in time spent searching for tenders across multiple platforms over 3 years • 50% efficiency gains over existing tender evaluations and process (Hull College Commercial) The findings of the project have been shared through network meetings, a local dissemination event and through Hull College’s research and innovation portal. The findings have also been shared with the Humber Technology Strategy Board.

Approaches to reaching new audiences and entering new marketplaces Retail Climate developed a digital platform to serve up highly targeted resources to the UK retail sector. They chose a retail audience for reasons including SME retailers lack market orientation, e.g. in a survey 0% had undertaken market research to understand if their customer base(s) are concerned about climate change. Retailers were largely unaware of the risks or opportunities posed by a changing climate and retail respondents do not actively search out information to increase their sustainability. Retail Climate provides access across the range of retail businesses including independent retailers, PLCs, co-operatives, franchises, charities and concessions.

The project has demonstrated how an existing interface can be adapted to a new audience, and it would be worth considering how it could be further adapted to suit others. The original intention was to develop a platform called ‘Business Climate’. Early investigation showed that this would be too broad an audience to tackle in one year, so the decision to specialise in the retail sector was taken. The current platform provides relevant resources to the retail sector, but could be altered to contain resources more suited to other business sectors.

Action 11.

Ensure your chosen theme/offer is broad enough to attract a suitable audience, but not so broad as to render the theme and resources irrelevant (as Business Climate found when making the decision to specialise as Retail Climate).

In common with Retail Climate, the Hull and Humber Project also utilised an existing platform, as described in the case study above. Other projects opted to develop a bespoke solution. The mOBILE project developed an online marketplace for real-time online co-innovation of mHealth (mobile health) products and services to support the activities of the Manchester mHealth ecosystem. The ecosystem consists of an active community of academics, NHS, Industry and third-sector organisations working together to ‘make mHealth happen’ in the Manchester region. A review of existing platforms available found that no commercially available product met the needs of the network.

The projects have demonstrated that both the use of existing platforms and bespoke platforms developed in house can be successful.

Partnerships for Progress

Action 12.

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Carry out a critical analysis of all the various options based on your strategic criteria, including existing or hybrid platforms, and aggregated solutions.

The BRACKEN project produced a searchable business hub for business services provided by the South West Wales Vocational Support Initiative Network. The hub resulted in an

improvement in the business-facing web presence of each of the partner institutions within the network. Through the use of Enterprise Architecture (EA), the project was able to model new management arrangements and to develop better versions of the institutional websites so they could be effectively searched for business support information.

Put simply, the project applied EA principles to move the SWWVSI Network from its ‘as is’ situation of loose collaboration, to a ‘to be’ instance of an integrated hub and network with common management processes. More information about EA can be found in a Jisc infoKit. Action 13.

To reach the widest audience, you should: • choose a platform or set of solutions that is easy to adapt and easy for your audience to use • or develop a platform that retains the principles of ease of use and transferability as key considerations • Consider open source solutions to reduce costs and aid sustainability

IN THE PRESS

Future Hull campaign launched to promote apprenticeships Coverage of the Future Hull platform, an adapted a version of HumberOpen platform produced by the Hull and Humber Open Innovation project, to support apprenticeships and local business collaboration. http://bit.ly/16OYCD7

Effecting an institutional change “There is no one ‘University’” sums up the issue that the coordination of internal partners is just as challenging as engaging with many different enterprises externally.

This was demonstrated by the Ingenuity KnowledgeHub project at the University of Nottingham who mentioned challenges such as: Difficulty in recruiting University academic and business support staff as ‘experts’, due to their uncertainty about putting themselves forward as ‘experts’ or applying their expertise to small enterprises etc.; Attempting to align different departmental marketing activities to reinforce each other rather than work in opposition; and

However, by working with the central Communications and Marketing team the project met with considerable success in both improving contacts and increasing their understanding of the drivers for organisations, internally and externally. A chance encounter at their launch event between members of RSA (Royal Society for the

Partnerships for Progress

Reconciling the ‘corporate’ face of The University with the more spontaneous, trusting, reciprocal approach of social media such as Twitter and Linkedin.

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encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) and the Pro Vice-Chancellor has resulted in a potential collaboration including academies, jointly badged lectures, Catalyst and Innovation funding, student awards, and learning from Ingenuity KnowledgeHub. Action 14.

Early engagement with external communities is key to addressing user needs and developing a system that is both understandable and benefits users.

The exact requirements for the myKE system were established throughout the project with ‘co-creation’ input from the target users of the system. The partnership at the heart of the myKE project is Corridor Manchester, a partnership between Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Manchester, TRUSTECH (NHS), Manchester Science Parks and Manchester City Council.

The technology solution they developed would suit any similar initiative or partnership across the UK or even internationally. The open source nature of Drupal allowed easy customisation where necessary to fit both user requirements and fit in with existing hosting architecture at Manchester Metropolitan University. It is particularly suited to a partnership context because of the attractiveness to businesses of being able to search valuable knowledge-rich resources from a range of well-respected institutions.

Further, the solution would need little adaptation to work in other contexts; the logo and branding is unique to the tool: all that would need to change are the partners listed on the website.

The aim of Corridor Manchester is to support innovation and growth for the knowledgeintensive area of Oxford Road, just south of Manchester city centre. myKE found the partnership to be keen, enthusiastic and well-equipped in terms of skills and expertise: “all partners felt that they were (and were respected as) knowledge providers” (Mike Daw, project manager). For myKE this meant that there was no issue with uncertainty over levels of expertise; everyone was accepted as having something to contribute. It is not always necessary to start from scratch; sometimes it is better to build on existing partnerships and relationships. This avoids duplication, and, through innovative projects, can progress institutional change further.

Partnerships for Progress

Ultimately the strength of the partnership has also led to sustainability for the project as Corridor Manchester is supporting its development, through both increasing the breadth of resources and expertise on the platform and promoting and marketing the system, for a further year from March 2013. The project has thereby achieved the elusive alignment of marketing activities in this area for their various partners. Members of the project team are also talking to a number of organisations outside of the region that could use and adapt the system for sharing expertise within their business clusters, across university researchers and among student entrepreneurs.

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Open LivIn Harnessing technology to enable institutional change In the current economic climate, university intellectual property (IP) and new technology developments hold great potential to boost UK commercial innovation. However, reduced public funding, as well as insufficient emphasis on and expertise in ‘proof of concept’ means many viable innovations aren’t making it through the early stages.

Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) clearly understands the value of a strategic approach to open up IP and commercialisation by using crowd-based techniques and open innovation.

The Open LivIn project manager at LJMU has shown that one person can achieve a lot when embedded in the right network. Their working hypothesis is that if the right platform is there, then a community can be created. In each of 4 trials at other universities (Liverpool, Hull, York and Huddersfield), consultants engaged with the process, universities got good feedback on their IP propositions and new projects received commercialisation support that otherwise would not have been made available.

As a result of signing up to the Innovation Commons, Universities will be able to expand the breadth of their knowledge transfer activities however many invention disclosures they make a year. This is also true whether this approach is in addition to their usual knowledge transfer activities, or constitutes their entire approach to knowledge transfer. The development of relationships between the University and the Innovation Commons community has led to a number of consultants referring consultancy work and potential industrial collaborators to LJMU. The project has suggested that part of the open innovation value proposition for HEIs could be increased business and community engagement through the use of intermediaries.

The project found that there were two key elements building the Innovation Commons community and thereby strengthening the market for Open LivIn: When looking to exploit technologies, the University runs a ‘campaign’ to engage the community to vote and comment on the ideas. The project found that the most successful campaigns provided the right information at the right time to all the partners involved. The campaign administrator, normally a knowledge exchange expert (often based in a KT office), “animated” the campaigns and fed back to the entrepreneur consultants as part of the rules of engagement. It worked best when the administrator had an interest in the outcome, so that rather than feel they were adding to their workload, they generally understood that the process increased the capacity of the technology transfer office Underlying the approach is the engagement of entrepreneur consultants. Without growing this base the Open LivIn process will not work. These consultants offer expert advice on exciting new commercial developments. They also showcase their consultancy skills and services to potential new business partners.

For the University, this approach may create additional work in due diligence, procuring and managing consultants, but it should still enable a scaling up of resources which wouldn’t otherwise be possible

“The Government is keen to encourage links between universities and industry, but both parties need to be carefully selective in choosing and promoting commercial projects. The Innovation Commons provides a means for commercially aware people to filter new IP, and for universities to approve commercial projects led by experienced folk able to achieve significant income for the university.”

Dick West, West & Co Tech Management

Overall, through developing the Open LivIn model, the project has expanded the possibilities for commercial knowledge transfer, whatever size a university’s knowledge transfer office is.

Total institutional support can be important for the duration of, or for some period of time during, a project. However, amongst these projects there was a marked value in being free of the institutional culture. The environment in an institution can seriously affect the result of a change management programme of any kind, either positively supporting change, or subverting the aims of the project through top-level resistance to

Partnerships for Progress

Freedom from institutional culture

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change. The way in which business support is handled also varies from place to place.

Where communication with businesses aims at two-way engagement then the services delivered tend to have more traction with the community, and sustainability from the community.

Action 15.

Make sure you understand your institutional infrastructure and prevailing culture and the extent to which it may alter the likelihood of you effecting a change.

Amongst these projects, the most agile projects were were led by marketing and business engagement teams rather than academics. However, in at least one case, where the academic team was “allowed to get on with it” there was also space for the project to be creative. This project, Retail Climate, was also focussed on a bigger picture, external to the institution. It’s clear focus on climate change issues took the project outside their institutional strategy, and even beyond their regional partnerships.

As described in the Effective Internal Collaboration and Engagement section, another factor dictating success for some projects was having a “change leader”: someone who, at whatever level, could champion the cause for change across the institution. For change initiatives to succeed it is vital that the change is owned and led by the key group being impacted by the change. Change leaders have an ability to improve relationships, knowledge creation and sharing, all of which were key targets for Jisc in funding this work.

Partnerships for Progress

Action 16.

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Don’t forget to consider the change leader role in your context when looking to implement a solution to the challenges of opening innovation and access to resources.

Future implications As can be observed in the good practice case studies above, institutions and businesses involved in this initiative have gained experience and benefit from adopting a range of different technological approaches to enhancing access to knowledge, opportunities and experience. This good practice should inform the development of future national initiatives to enhance access to information, knowledge and expertise, and stimulate innovative growth.

Strategies to maximise value Emerging and existing technologies have a clear role in helping HE/FE institutions compete for partnership and commercialisation opportunities. Putting in place simple platforms and communication channels to encourage and improve the effectiveness of co-developing ideas has been shown by some projects, within a year of inception, to have brought about cost savings, and efficiency gains. This type of improvement can bring agility to institutions to better thrive in a competitive environment.

Using technology to link HE/FE institutions to their external partners has been shown to be effective if a sufficiently engaging approach is taken. Engagement was key in the most successful projects, not relying on a “build it and they will come approach�. The initiative’s critical friends observed that projects which spent lots of time on research and scoping their platform were not as successful as those who chose to dive straight into community engagement and got on with delivering services, in part through trial and error.

Targetting improving access to information and knowledge resources for external parties led some projects to opt for techniques such as match-making delivered through an online platform. How businesses determine if an institution has the knowledge they need is often difficult and requires significant input from the University, so anything that can be done to simplify the process should lead to new, potentially fruitful collaborations, consultancy opportunities and even income. Again, simplicity was key, so at Glasgow developing an ePrints plugin to improve the delivery of knowledge services has met with success amongst the ePrints user groups across the UK. In Edinburgh and in the west of Scotland, a simple iPhone app and a series of online webinars served to raise the profile of the availability of expertise in Scottish universities for collaboratively solving problems that businesses might have, in any area.

Partnerships for Progress

Achieving the online co-development of ideas is a tall order. Barriers include the issue of trust. Projects have had to work hard with their engaged users to overcome this and put in safeguard within their systems to protect the people and intellectual property involved but still allow innovation to flourish.

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What institutions should consider - calls to action! “...you can’t not do it”13 for fear of being left behind, but institutions can’t do everything so they need to choose those changes which will realise the biggest impact, and clearly align with their institutional strategy.

One of the aims for this synthesis was to gather together evidence based good practice from the projects funded by Jisc. The number of lessons learnt, and the practical guidance outlined below, demonstrate the value in having funded such a broad portfolio of work. Throughout this document we have highlighted a series of calls to action. These calls attempt to capture ‘how to’ advice succinctly, and are summarised on the next page. They fall into a number of broad categories, which can act as a short reference guide: Identifying and assessing new project or change opportunities Actions 7, 8, 11 Managing the project effectively to maximise the efficiency of internal institutional partnerships Actions 1, 2, 3, 4, 15, 16 Effective use of technology and existing platforms Actions 6, 7, 10, 12, 13 Effective engagement with external communities Actions 5, 13,14 Effective and innovative partnership with other HEIs Actions 7, 8, 9, 10 Good customer relationship management can help an organisation improve the quality of the services it provides to its customers, giving it a competitive advantage and enhancing its business sustainability.

Partnerships for Progress

Gaining institutional commitment to the policy of HE/FE working with business is likely to result in sustainability for collaborative partnerships which engage in open innovation or improve knowledge sharing. Regardless of the merits of the technology employed, commitment to policy change and culture change, and to working in partnership in their city or region will be crucial for institutions in future.

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11 Collis, B., & Moonen, J. (2001). Flexible learning in a digital world: Experiences and expectations.

London: Kogan Page. p.29

Calls to action

1.

Make sure you understand your institutional processes and procedures in advance of funding being awarded so you can get started straight away.

2.

Be prepared to commit to see your idea through to fruition; someone else may not be able to realise your vision.

3.

Make sure your team understands the innovative nature of the work; prepare others for change and making best use of technology to support activity.

4.

Understand the challenges you may face, and gain senior support early on for your ideas; your funder believes in your ideas, while you may need to convince your institutional management.

5.

Think about who the key individuals are in your sector, and how you might capitalise on their enthusiasm for using technology effectively.

6.

Online tools can help demonstrate to you which of your engagement activities are really paying off and are worth investing in; make sure you are collecting the relevant data.

7.

Consider whether you have an area that could benefit from co-development, and adopt a platform that has already been developed.

8.

Think about your own data and what could be achieved if it was open.

9.

With seven UK universities already signed up, and another 11 in the process of joining, your institution could consider becoming part of the Innovation Commons network.

10. Where appropriate, make use of and contribute to established repositories (such as EPrints) to maximise reach. Technologies and platforms which already have a well established developer base can prove a useful source of assistance during implementation.

11. Ensure your chosen theme/offer is broad enough to attract a suitable audience, but not too broad as to render the theme and resources irrelevant.

12. Carry out a critical analysis of all the various options based on your strategic criteria, including existing or hybrid platforms, and aggregated solutions.

13. To reach the widest audience, you should: choose a platform or set of solutions that is easy to adapt and easy for your audience to use or develop a platform that retains the principles of ease of use and transferability as key considerations consider open source solutions to reduce costs and aid sustainability

15. Make sure you understand your institutional infrastructure and prevailing culture and the extent to which it may alter the likelihood of you effecting a change.

16. Don’t forget to consider the change leader role in your context when looking to implement a solution to the challenges of opening innovation and access to resources.

Partnerships for Progress

14. Early engagement with external communities is key to addressing user needs and developing a system that is both understandable and benefits users.

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The Jisc BCE OIA2R principles Taking the main lessons learnt from the project case studies, the 10 principles outlined below should lead institutions to be able to effect their own change process and create opportunities for knowledge sharing and leading collaborative co-development, harnessing innovative technologies. Although some of these may seem obvious, institutions have reported that it is challenging to apply them consistently in practice.

I

User driven approach Knowing your market and what drives users’ behaviour.

II

Internal collaborative commitment Assessing and addressing the willingness and capability to collaborate internally within your institution.

III

Partner benefits to fuel partner engagement Genuinely engaged external partners will clearly understand the benefits to themselves, and thus aid sustainability.

IV

Technology to fit the purpose, not the other way round Successful solutions and services should highlight user benefits. Innovative use of web technologies can make this seamless.

V

Design simplicity Interfaces and tools open to the widest range of users will be more sustainable.

VI

Clarity of process and roles All users need to understand where they can contribute to and benefit from the process.

VII Existing solutions If there is an appropriate piece of open software or tool out there already, then use it.

VIII Ambassadors to promote change Change leaders, catalytic individuals, consultant entrepreneurs can have a vital role to promote, sustain, and possibly embed your initiative.

IX

Existing networks enhance connections

Partnerships for Progress

Using an existing active network is likely to realise more opportunities and to enable connection with more people.

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X

Openness enables discoverability Designing resources that are openly accessible and discoverable to new collaborations and innovation.

Project descriptions Phase 1 (2010/11) The projects were all recorded talking about the outcomes of their projects. The playlist of 8 videos is on the Jisc BCE YouTube site: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8DCAD26C10003220

Access to Resources BRACKEN (Business Resource and Community Knowledge Exchange Network) Swansea Metropolitan University Developed and optimised the knowledge, information and business support services provided by the South West Wales Vocational Support Initiative (SWWVSI) network of HE and FE institutions and regional business support agencies. https://sites.google.com/site/jiscbracken/home eInnovate South Devon College with University College Plymouth St Mark & St John (Marjon) Provide an online resource to extend access to knowledge transfer and innovation services, helping businesses to be innovative and add value to their activities. http://commoodle.southdevon.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=10 Engage Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in partnership with Belfast Metropolitan College (BMC) Presented a unified and integrated service portfolio to business, covering licensing and patents, research collaboration, consultancy, training and specialist facilities. http://www.engageni.ac.uk/AboutUs/Partners/ OpenBiz Interface, the Scottish “Knowledge connection for business and University of Edinburgh Worked with SMEs to raise their awareness of what Scottish Universities offer businesses and connect them with academics and University services. http://www.interface-online.org.uk/3897

Aimed to bring local SMEs and micro businesses closer to the wide range of knowledge available to them from academia, to enhance business sustainability, competitiveness and profitability and promote collaboration. http://www.ruralenterprisesolutions.co.uk/default.aspx

Partnerships for Progress

RES-KN: Regional Enterprise Solutions Knowledge Network University of Plymouth

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Open Innovation MyMobileBristol University of Bristol in partnership with Bristol City Council Building on the success of the Mobile Campus Assistant project (JISC Rapid Innovation programme 2009), the application was developed to include time and location sensitive data to be available and benefit the wider community in Bristol. http://mymobilebristol.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ O2I: Online Open Innovation Cornwall College in partnership with the University of Plymouth O2I enabled small and micro-businesses in Cornwall and Plymouth to benefit from access to both Plymouth University and Cornwall College intellectual property (IP), expertise and business support offerings. http://www.o2i.org.uk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU-QfuR7k0Q REALISE: Refining and Learning from online tools for Internet Shared Enterprise University of Southampton, with partners at the University of Sheffield Linked up users, researchers, developers and businesses around open innovation in assistive technology. http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/blog/realise/

Phase 2 (2012/13) Access to Resources Encapsulate University of Essex in partnership with University of Glasgow Explored the feasibility of using digital repositories of research outputs as a means of automatically identifying the relevant academic expertise within HEIs in response to online queries from businesses.

Venture Navigator assessment: http://www.venturenavigator.co.uk/assessment/available/2/10 e-prints plug-in: http://bazaar.eprints.org/265/

Partnerships for Progress

The Infusion Factory York St John University, Science City York, Higher York

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This project will develop an online portal to link Further and Higher Education content producers with businesses requiring access to quality resources. http://www.theinfusionfactory.co.uk/

IngenuityKnowledgeHub University of Nottingham and partners University of Derby, Good Work Guide and In A Fishbowl Facilitated open online collaborations between local business and social enterprise networks to deliver a sustainable and inclusive university-led online “knowledge hub�.

Gateway: http://www.ingenuitygateway.com/ Blog: http://mahara.nottingham.ac.uk/view/view.php?id=2587 MEGS-KT: Cross-Institutional Learning Framework for Energy CPD Loughborough University, University of Nottingham, University of Birmingham Designed and delivered a cross-institutional online knowledge repository and delivery framework for energy sector learners across the UK. http://megs-kt.lboro.ac.uk/index.php myKE: Engaging SMEs with Corridor Manchester Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Manchester, Manchester Science Parks Ltd. Co-developed the myEnterprise platform for the online sharing of services and expertise from knowledge-intensive partners based on Corridor Manchester with SMEs to generate economic growth. http://www.myke.biz/ Retail Climate: Realising a New Business Climate Aberystwyth University Produced a co-development platform to assist the business sector, in particular SMEs, to take advantage of the fast growing market opportunities created by a changing climate. http://retailclimate.co.uk/

Open Innovation COINED: Creative Open Innovation Network for Expertise in Design University for the Creative Arts in partnership with Brunel University Defined, operated and tested an innovation workflow to enable creative arts/design researchers, students and industry partners to co-develop innovative new ideas. http://ideasintoindustry.wordpress.com/

Enabled educational institutions, businesses, authorities and agencies take advantage of innovation opportunities across the Humber region through an online open innovation web 2.0 product. http://humberopen.org/

Partnerships for Progress

Hull and Humber Open Innovation Hull College in partnership with Hull Local Enterprise Partnership

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mOBILE University of Manchester with partners: Mimas, MAHSC, Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, Trafford Provider Services, Adherence Science, EuMHA, Janssen Health Innovation, Manchester Science Parks, Regpoint, Wragge Develop an online marketplace demonstrator for co-innovation of mobile health products and services, matching requirements to capabilities across partners and providing a workspace where members can co-develop solutions. http://mobilemanchester.wordpress.com/ Open LivIN: An Integrated Open IP and Innovation Marketplace Liverpool John Moore’s University, with partners The University of Liverpool, The Mersey Partnership, Technology Strategy Board Open LivIN is a city region-wide innovation market-place that connects business and university innovators to maximise exploitation of IP and innovations. https://www.openlivin.org/ OPEX: Open Innovation Exchange Programme Coventry University Produced a virtual platform for collaboration and networking as well as some exploratory research on serious games and mobile game apps for business and community engagement.

Partnerships for Progress

https://opex.coventry.ac.uk/

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References and links to other relevant resources Encouraging a British Invention Revolution: Sir Andrew Witty’s Review of Universities and Growth (2013) http://bit.ly/19Kszqn Jisc (2009) Facilitating Open Innovation: Landscape and Feasibility Study http://bit.ly/dcjmAL (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jisc (2010) JISC Grant Funding 1/10: Access to Resources and Open Innovation http://bit.ly/crLFzB (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jisc (2011) JISC Grant funding 14/11: Access to resources and open innovation phase 2: Call for projects http://bit.ly/14swDsZ (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jisc (2011) Sustaining and embedding innovations: good practice guide http://sustainembed.pbworks.com (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jisc (2012) CRM Handbook:Good Practice in Customer Relationship Management http://bit.ly/URkllN (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jisc BCE Blog: http://bce.jiscinvolve.org/wp/ (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jisc BCE Netvibes OIA2R: http://www.netvibes.com/jiscbce#JISC_BCE_Programme (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jisc BCE You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/JISCBCE (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jisc infoNet (2011) Enterprise Architecture infoKit http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/ea/ (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jordan, S. (2011) OPEN Biz: Open Programme engaging with businesses http://www.slideshare.net/repofringe/repository-fringe-aug-2011-open-biz (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Jordan, S. (2011) JISC- Final Case Study: OPEN Biz http://bce.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2011/10/OPEN-Biz-Final-Case-Study.docx (Accessed: 5 August 2013) Spinning Top Films (2013) Infusion Factory – Video Two 2013 http://vimeo.com/60160876 (Accessed: 5 August 2013)

University of Bristol (2011) Business and Community Engagement Programme: Open Innovation http://bce.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2011/10/MMB_casestudy_final.pdf (Accessed: 5 August 2013)

Partnerships for Progress

UniversityLeicester (2013) What’s the Point of the University? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L-TNq0OXQE&feature=youtu.be (Accessed: 5 August 2013)

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