Leader column

Our new strategy is nothing if not ambitious in providing us with a mission to ‘make a major impact on global society’.

One way we will achieve this is by producing confident, independent and analytically-minded graduates – some becoming leaders in their fields. We will also encourage our researchers to explore new avenues, respond to global agendas and develop themes of international impact.

Enterprise and knowledge transfer – activities which generate, apply and exploit knowledge and other capabilities outside our campus in the wider world – are also powerful tools to help us achieve this mission.

In other words, to make an impact on society – whether it’s local, national or global – you have to transfer your expertise and knowledge outside the academic environment. In brutal terms, if all we ever do is educate our students and create research, and the research doesn’t go anywhere, and the students don’t make a difference – then we have failed.

It must be a two-way process; not just flowing out from the University, but also responding to the wishes and needs of external agencies and societies. No longer must enterprise and knowledge transfer be the ‘poor cousins’ of research and teaching/learning. They are fundamental activities for a world-class university, and we have identified them quite properly as one of our strategy’s four ‘key themes’.

I think we are very good at these activities. You can find examples all over the campus; the Post Office came to Leeds to help it plan services across the country, so academics from computing, maths, business and geography collaborated to produce models of where demand for their business was greatest (see also geography’s latest collaboration).

Our centre for health informatics – a growing area of importance covering technology-driven areas like information integration and its application to improve patient care – is working with major players in the NHS, industry and public sector, including a partnership with Accenture delivering everything from consultancy to career opportunities.

Colour chemistry has just completed a project for ICI on why paint colours on card samples never look the same on a painted wall. The University has set up seven centres for industrial collaboration in the region to help companies develop innovative and competitive products from artificial limbs to ice cream.

The innovative care, values and the future of welfare (CAVA) programme is setting new agendas for government policy through its work on how social policies serve people trying to juggle family and work, caring and earning. We are helping education providers with special needs teaching and childcare support.

Our enterprising students and graduates are turning business ideas into commercial ventures using campus start-up facilities, while staff spin-outs have made a profit over the last five years of around £4m. This month sees the launch of drug information spin-out LUTO, which will ensure patients can understand the information given with everything from cold cures to heart drugs (see the press release for more information).

The list goes on, right across the University. Knowledge transfer and/or enterprise – the protection and exploitation of our intellectual property – is inherent in almost every activity we do, and there is enormous scope for demonstrating how we impact on society.

We need to identify and communicate our achievements. We have to get people to integrate enterprise and knowledge transfer into their thoughts – and even recognise it when they are doing it! We need to co-ordinate and provide a framework using the faculty structure and research expertise to enable these activities to become part of the daily round; this will be a priority for our new Pro-Vice-Chancellor Richard Williams. The reward and promotions procedures will reflect the importance of these activities.

Others have confidence in us. The technology transfer brand leaders IP2IPO bought our spin-out and licensing agents Techtran, and are now working with the top eight universities in the UK for enterprise activity and potential. They believe our University could make up to £10m pounds a year from such activity – that’s £10m we could invest in academic activities, three times our strategic fund.

Of course it isn’t just about income generation and competitiveness, important though they are. Enterprise and knowledge transfer activities raise our profile at home and internationally. They demonstrate our value to our funders, and to society, and thereby secure their continuing support. They underpin our mission to make a major impact among a multiplicity of communities.

They are brilliant in helping us break down the boundaries between disciplines and forging new collaborations and partnerships, helping us to unleash creativity and new ideas and contributing to a dynamic and sustainable environment for staff and students. And to return to the theme of my very first leader column, that’s what a world-class university looks like!

Consultation on the first draft of our strategy is now closed – the response has been terrific (see Reporter page 3) and will enable us to make enormous improvements. We’ll be back in the autumn with the next version – and some clear ideas about how we will achieve it!

Professor Michael J P Arthur
University Vice-Chancellor