"It's good to see that innovation in Scotland is alive and well"

This is how Marion Anderson, Project Manager of Encompass welcomed over 65 delegates who attended the Encompass event: 'Accelerating Innovation in your business - how universities can help' on 26th November, 2012 in Glasgow.

Why innovate?

Guest speaker Professor Jonathan Levie of the Hunter Centre of Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde Business School started the morning of with an outline of what innovation is and, just as important, what innovation isn't.  In no time, the delegates were drawing their own sunflower maps and business model canvasses.  "Now is the time to innovate" stated Professor Levie, "when your competitors are still focussed on survival".

 

 

Why work with universities?

Author and journalist Adam Jolly was up next to explain why
universities want to work with businesses.  Adam pointed out the pros and cons of working with universities and how important it is to understand how different an SME culture and a university culture is.  If you embrace this difference, you will get the best out of universities.   "It's easy to have self limiting beliefs when you are doing it on your own" said Adam, "but when you work together with the supervision of a university, you can push through to growth".

 

How to access universities

With our designated speaker not able to attend, Shelley Breckenridge from Interface made a mad dash from Edinburgh to explain to our delegates how businesses can actually connect with academia.  Interface can take a business enquiry and share it with all of Scotland's universities and research institutions in order to find the right university team for a particular project.  Huge thanks to Shelley giving a cool, calm and informative talk at such short notice.
The afternoon session continued with speakers Bill Corr talking about funding routes with Scottish Enterprise and Alison Reith from the West of Scotland KTP Centre explaining what a Knowledge Transfer Partmership is and when it could be relevant to a business.
To end the day, we heard from three companies who had worked with universities to take their ideas closer to commercialisation.  Colin Hamilton from Micro-phonics (pictured left) explained how he had worked with both Strathclyde and Glasgow universities.  Eric Whale from Cellucomp described his company's relationship with the University of Strathclyde, and Archie Prentice made the journey from Inverness to talk about his company Carbon Diagnostics' experience with the University of Aberdeen.
The afternoon ended with more coffee and networking, as well as pre-arranged 1-1 sessions with the Encompass team.



The feedback to the event was highly positive, with comments such as:

"Thank you, a really enjoyable day"

"Well presented seminar.  Thought provoking"

"Great event, thank you very much for organising and it was all executed to time and very informative.  Thanks!"

"Thank you for a refreshing event.  Looking forward to being involved in future Encompass events."

"Jonathan Levie very informative as was Adam Jolly and Shelley Breckenridge. Good info on Interface.  Jonathan
Levie's business model canvas was excellent."

Register with Encompass to find out about future events