Access to Expertise

The Access to Expertise programme provides businesses with the opportunity to collaborate with academics from the universities of Brighton and Sussex, accessing up to around £7,500 market value of specialist research expertise to develop bespoke, specialist solutions for their business innovations. Working closely with university experts, companies have been able to develop new or existing products or services tailored to the specific needs of their business, supporting them in their growth journey.

Springboard Media worked with Dr Paul Levy, from University of Brighton, on their Innovation strategy.

“To have access to academics and their research has really matured us as a company, and given us a far better understanding of the market we operate in.”

David Powell, Springboard Media SCOPE:

EPM Consultancy worked with Dr David Eggleton, from the University of Sussex, on the development of an E-commerce platform for train training business on grant funding.

“We had an idea, a concept that we wanted to take to a new service –the academics have really helped us to turn the idea into a viable product. We are now selling online services through an ecommerce platform, which is amazing. It’s been an amazing journey. The team has been fantastic at helping us through that, from the initial idea, incremental innovation, through to the launch of the new service. We have a viable prototype platform now.”

Kathy Vuillaume, EPM Consultancy

Consort Frozen Foods worked with Dr Paul Levy, from the University of Brighton, and ran bespoke ideations sessions with the leadership and staff teams to develop new concepts to utilise resources, expand services and create efficiencies. This has led to a Knowledge Transfer Partnership application.

“Most of the time, we’re running like mad to just to deliver our normal business, so we don’t have time to look at innovation, to look at our efficiency, to look at best practices. What these sorts of projects do is give you the collaboration, a bit like a mentor, and access to information, technologies and resources that you wouldn’t normally get.

What we have done is use the RISE project to facilitate the opportunity for innovation. And we’re very excited about where we’re going!”

Simon Renton, Consort Frozen Foods

Circular Inc worked with Dr Yan Wang and Dr Khuong Nyugen, from the University of Brighton, to investigate intelligent tools and systems to deliver scalable, realtime stock, logistics and sales solutions. This work has led onto a successful Innovate UK of £100,000 to continue work with the university School of Art and Media.

“We had an idea, a very woolly idea, about addressing the very analogue nature of clothing repair and how maybe tech could solve that. But because we’re not involved in software development, Machine Learning or anything like that, it was largely blue sky thinking. We had no idea if it was even possible. So having that link to RISE, and having links to the academics really helped, not only show what was possible, but opening doors to even more possibilities.

It’s exciting because there’s way more potential than we thought there would be, even from what we thought was quite an ambitious project to start with!”

Oliver Pepper, Circular Inc

Judges Choice Pet Food worked with Tim Laing, from the University of Brighton to Investigate the environmental impact of pet ownership and how this can be mitigated by pet food choice and manufacturing.

“I think when you’re in business you don’t really get the opportunity to stop and think about the depth of what you’re doing. It’s great to have an opportunity to sit down and thrash some of the challenges out with someone that’s unbiased and maybe can come up with some solutions.

This is all about being able to tap into expertise and expertise that we would absolutely never have had the opportunity to do so. We found out that we have amazing resources, just right on our doorstep. This is just the start.

There are so many avenues that we can now take […] this has really helped us form a plan and opened new markets for us, not just in the UK but abroad, and I think it’s helped us really focus, laser focus, on where we want to be going in the future and how to get there.

It’s basically opened our minds. [This project has] given us confidence to talk openly about some of the environmental impacts that we face, and that we face as an industry, a pet industry. I’m not just talking about from ownership point of view but everybody that manufactures pet food or is part of the pet food industry has a responsibility to the environment.

It’s not just about what you receive from the university, it’s what you can give back too – and I think working with a local university really strengthens the sense of community. And it really bridges the gap between business and education –and I think that’s really important, especially for the students.”

Chieko Chester, Judge’s Choice Petfood

Vitality Hemp worked with Professor Alan Dalton and Keiran Clifford, from the University of Sussex, on development of a hemp-based acoustic panel for the building trade.

“As a small business, a micro business really, we’re fortunate that we’re so nimble, it’s a real strength, we have to play to our strengths but also kind of leveraging the expertise and experience of other individuals, institutions is really important.

The [Access to Expertise] project has certainly benefited Vitality Hemp because we’ve been able to quantify some of the research areas – some the figures that we were hoping to see have been validated – that in itself enables us to the next step forwards towards registration of Intellical Property, commercialising the product and adding further value to the specifications of the product.

It’s been a really good collaboration.”

Nathaniel Loxley, Vitality Hemp