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Working with Innovation Partnerships

Collaboration leads to innovation for East Midlands businesses

INNOVATION THROUGH PARTNERSHIP

The project came to the attention of TV celebrity and innovation expert Maggie Philbin, who visited Advanced Smoke Group’s Oadby site in June.  She said: “Innovation Partnerships offers a fantastic chance for businesses to use a fresh pair of eyes to look at where improvements can be made.  I’m always amazed at how quickly this kind of support can make a positive difference to a small company. There can be a lack of understanding by company owners of just how switched on Universities are to supporting firms, whatever size, and the enormous wealth of expertise at their fingertips.”

A number of businesses in the East Midlands are reaping the benefits of Innovation Partnerships with the University of Leicester and have already seen major improvements to both their business practices and their future prospects.

For example, Leicester social enterprise Well for Living and Nottingham based VDT Direct decided to get in touch with the academic and business experts through the University’s Innovation Partnerships project.  Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, the project is  designed to help companies achieve cost savings, as well as long-term commercial benefits and growth by collaborating on environmental sustainability innovation projects.

Video Domain Technologies Direct, suppliers of high-tech surveillance equipment, wanted to introduce a green marketing capability into the company to evolve their marketing and sales operations.  They approached the University of Leicester, who they were already working with to see if they could help.  The Innovation Partnerships project enabled them to take on a recently qualified journalism graduate, Sophie Mason, for four months. During this time, she not only developed and implemented a marketing strategy but also utilised the internet and digital technology to redesign and produce their brochures and catalogues. She also used social media to create & build relationships with existing and potential clients and saved the company money by cutting the cost of raw materials and consumables. Sophie did so well that, post-internship, she secured herself a full-time job in the marketing and sales team.

Local social enterprise Well for Living needed support to further develop and market its Pyramid database.  The database had proved to be such an important relationship management tool for the parent charity Leicestershire AIDS Support Services (LASS), they were convinced similar organisations could also benefit greatly, if only they could have access to it.

Jenny Hand, Director at Well for Living and CEO of LASS, said:

“We worked with the University through the Secondment route to gather market intelligence and develop a web-based version of Pyramid.  Work with the computing department has since further developed Pyramid, making it much more marketable, simple to use and freeing time to focus on delivering services rather than back room administration.  The collaboration has greatly raised our profile, making us more appealing to funders.  The knowledge and intelligence we have access to is fantastic and we now have an ongoing relationship which we are confident will help grow our profile even further in the future.”  

 

Professor Kevin Schurer, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise at the University of Leicester says:
“We are very keen to listen to and work with firms to meet their requirements and identify practical business solution. With consumers and suppliers becoming increasingly more environmentally conscious, and demanding it makes sense for companies to adopt innovative and sustainable business processes and products in order to strengthen their brand and attract new business.  I do believe that tackling these challenges is best done through partnerships and that the exchange of knowledge and expertise between universities and business is one of the most powerful means of collaboration.”
 

The Innovation Partnerships project is inviting applications from East Midlands SMEs interested in tackling environmental challenges including waste reduction, recycling and energy use.  Anyone interested should contact Anjuu Trevedi, Innovation Partnerships Director on 0116 252 3354 or anjuu.trevedi@le.ac.uk                                       

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