Industry and Higher Education

European higher education is adopting a free-market or corporate-business discourse. Increasingly the academy is talked about in terms of a ‘knowledge industry’ or ‘revenue generator’, where intellectual resources are ‘leveraged’, and knowledge is a ‘commodity’. Critical analyses of the vocabulary, imagery, rhetoric and assumptions featured in popular business texts suggest a discourse which can be characterized as management-centred, ethically decontextualized, universalizing, libertarian, Darwinian, consumerist, and alarmist. Its adoption within the academy has important implications for the future of European higher education.

As organizations are increasingly using formal education to support organizational renewal and change, institutions for higher education face the challenge of providing industry with education that not only teaches participants new concepts and new skills, but also provides them with the motivation and the commitment to implement what has been learned in their daily work. In this paper, the authors present twelve key success factors for designing education programmes for organizational transformation. Two requisites for the successful implementation of these success factors are also identified: a true partnership between the client firm and the education provider, and a pivotal role for the course manager.

This paper presents a model for university–enterprise joint seminars consisting of three phases: (1) preparation of students for the seminar (study of a company, discussion of the company in a group, composition of a general characterization of the company); (2) a seminar in the company (introduction by supervising university teacher, presentation of the company, discussion, a company tour); and (3) a report from students on various aspects of the company. At the end of the semester, each student presents a form-based analytical report. The paper examines this approach in the light of three years experience in running such seminars.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are viewed as the backbone of many European economies and as an engine house for future economic growth. Many SMEs, however, are constrained by limited technical and other resources that slow down product and process innovation. Universities are seen as key players in both encouraging and supporting economic growth through technology and, more broadly, knowledge-related transfer. To maximize the potential that transfer has to offer, particular attention must be given to creating the right ‘transfer environment’. The success rate of technology transfers depends on the transfer instrument adopted, the stage at which transfer is contemplated, and the successful blending of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ systems. The influence of these factors on future economic growth and job creation are reviewed.

Perceived as important contributors to economic growth, network and cluster groups are currently receiving much attention. The same may be said of SM Es. But practical and theoretical perspectives indicate that SMEs, and particularly the owner-managers, place little value on networks and have only limited networking resources. Consequently, they do not access networks that could help their development and growth. This paper presents some of the current theoretical concepts and practitioner findings on networks. The implications are that, to be effective, networks need to be thoughtfully managed by a neutral third party, and that clear distinctions need to be drawn between learning networks, commercial alliances and social networks, but that all three types yield considerable competitive advantage to those businesses willing to engage. Empirical evidence suggests that with careful, yet intensive network management measurable organizational innovation and development are attainable by those SMEs willing to participate in network groups.

This paper describes the outcomes of work conducted to help local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) since 1999 by a unit attached to a university in the North East of England. It describes the pattern of help offered, the uptake rates, levels of assistance and the types of outcome measures achieved. Certain regions of Europe have been given special status as areas that are in need of varying degrees of funded assistance. The North East of England is one such area and has attracted several hundreds of millions of pounds in European-sponsored State Aid as a result. The paper describes briefly how some of this money has been used to help SMEs design products more quickly, reduce waste and re-work, and introduce continuous improvement to key business processes. It then details the numbers and types of companies concerned, how many companies dropped out of the project early, the patterns of work and the measured outcomes. The authors examine the uptake rates, and discuss possible reasons why some SMEs do not make full use of the facilities on offer. Anecdotal evidence of SME owner motivations and decision criteria is also presented. Reasons for the overall success of the unit's efforts are suggested, as are ways to improve the potential for SME engagement throughout the HE sector.

Two major initiatives are in place in Wales that aim to create a strong and internationally competitive small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector. These are the Technology Exploitation Programme (TEP) and the Centres of Excellence for Technology and Industrial Collaboration (CETIC) programme. The Materials Centre of Excellence at the University of Wales Swansea is one of the centres in the CETIC programme with traditionally strong links to the Welsh manufacturing sector. This paper describes the Centre's experiences during its first year in the programme as a way of highlighting both the successes and difficulties in the implementation of EU Objective 1 technology transfer initiatives.

‘Innovation’ is an often used, yet much misunderstood term. Often innovation is left to chance or, at best, approached by relatively unstructured hard work and hard thinking. This paper describes a research programme known as the ‘Futures Project’, which provides a ‘virtual’ body of expertise that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can access when increased innovation activity is required. By exposing SMEs to techniques for the generation of new and potentially innovative ideas, and for developing the right ideas at the right time, new techniques and improved versions of old techniques can be tested in a non-threatening environment.