Keywords: networking

The service is aimed at bringing the homogeneous nature of business and heterogeneous nature of universities closer together in order to support innovation. To do this successfully has required overcoming the most obvious drag factor of integrating the aims, purpose and activities of these heterogeneous organisations with the uniformity of purpose and ambition of the more homogeneous nature of individual businesses. Despite much progress this remains a problem with very many initiatives being established to overcome this change.

To increase the level and type of University - Park tenant interaction

Knowledge transfer between business and universities has and continues to be a challenge. The ideas noted encourage the difficult partner, i.e., universities to take an active role in building the links to help support innovation.

The initiative that is the basis of Inspiring Solution Programme covers a range of programmes to try to encourage good students to develop an interest in micro and SME companies to help drive innovation. Examples of these ideas include: Creating annual links between companies on the Surrey Research Park and students on the MBA programme to support the development of a business model for commercialisation of new technology. This is more aimed at the larger companies on the site. MBA students from the University of Surreys Business School are invited to run an Action Consultancy Module for MBA students that undertake a consultancy on a real live business problem for companies on the Research Park. The University is now starting to use staff from companies on the Park to co-teach on technology and business courses in the University. Links are now being developed with companies on the Park that move university-business relationships up the ""Value-Chain by shifting from a transactional engagement with the companies to a model based on strategic partnerships to provide a more supportive long term working relationship with companies and help influence the innovation process. This has encouraged more productive discussions around future research and skills requirement as well as R&D. Part of this has been to appoint key account managers within the University. The intention is to build on R&D and move the outputs up the value chain to help the business gain a competitive advantage. The University is now encouraging all PhD students to increase the economic impact of their research. A practical activity that is being developed to encourage this is that all students need to produce ""Pathways to Impact document is given to the universitys key business partners including companies on the Surrey Research Park to allows them to gain easy access to the Universitys government funded research portfolio and unencumbered IP derived from this research

All tenants and business students

The Park and Business School