What do we mean by Enterprise and Innovation? The words can take on different meanings depending on their context. In this blog, I focus on those aspects of enterprise and innovation that occur at the boundaries of academic research, and where research intersects with the commercial world. Enterprise is the term I use most commonly in conversation with University colleagues, and I mean it to include all forms of academic entrepreneurship – spin-outs, start-ups, patents and licensing, academics as consultants and advisors to industry and related bodies.
Innovation is a more contentious term in the Higher Education environment – one could argue that the majority of we do could be described as innovation – innovative teaching, innovative widening participation activities, innovative recruitment, etc. The innovation I refer to is the innovation that leads to new or improved products and services. Typically this could involve collaboration between researchers and industry, partnership activities, contract research, and working with those bridge organisations such as the Catapults.
In this blog I’ll discuss a range of activities that fall into the Enterprise and Innovation domain.
Professor Michele Barbour, Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Innovation