All 3 entries tagged Business

Fundamental Curiosity: The Dynamic Of The University

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/knowledge/business/gus

A Q and A with Professor Tim Jones, Pro Vice-Chancellor: Research (Science and Medicine), Knowledge Transfer and Business Engagement, University of Warwick.

What do you think is the most under-hyped, yet significant, change universities in the UK will undergo during the next decade?

I don’t know if it’s necessarily under-hyped but I think the private provision of higher education will completely change the dynamic in the future. I think a number of universities will be threatened very significantly. Private provision will expand and will change the way universities have to behave and operate in a very, very significant way.

And do you think global providers have an advantage?

Almost certainly yes, I mean the US is a classic example, and I think the UK is behind the curve with this certainly compared to some countries.

Open-access research: is the UK shooting itself in the foot or are we leading the way?

There is no doubt that open access research is a great thing in principle, however I think being first is not necessarily a good thing. So I would argue we are shooting ourselves in the foot because I don’t necessarily see the rest of the world following. I think the UK is going to be in a very difficult position.

The University of Warwick is hosting the 2013 Global University Summit in May, which will issue a formal declaration on higher education to the G8. If you could get one commitment from the summit of world leaders, what would that be?

It would be to ensure that universities remain establishments of academic research and scholarships and are no skewed too much by the agendas of governments around the world, where economic growth seems to be the raison d’être for the existence of universities. Don’t skew universities too much towards being engines of economic growth; don’t change the dynamic of the way the university operates. Don’t discriminate against intellectual, fundamental, curiosity driven education and research that continues to attract the very very best students and academics, who are free thinkers and are not constrained by government thinking and policy.

This blog is part of a regular series on the Knowledge Centre looking at issues in higher education ahead of the Global University Summit (May 28-30 2013), hosted by the University of Warwick in Whitehall, London. As part of the Summit, a declaration of commitment and policy recommendations will be drawn up for the G8 summit of world leaders, taking place in Northern Ireland in June.

Image: Auguste Rodin's Le Penseur (The Thinker). Source: (Flickr).
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As Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Knowledge Transfer and Business Engagement, Professor Tim Jones has responsibility for development of the University of Warwick’s knowledge transfer and business engagement strategy to support the University’s research and teaching ambitions through corporate level regional, national and international relationships with business partners. He also works with the Registrar and Chief Operating Officer to maximise the impact of the University HEIF allocations and lead engagements with relevant external bodies.He also has responsibility for the University’s Science research strategy, including the development of research opportunities and collaborations both nationally and internationally and the raising of research income, publications and citation scores in the Faculty of Science.

Gareth Jenkins : 21 May 2013 16:09 |  Tags: Business Chancellor Engagement Global Gus Jones Knowledge Medicine Pro Professor Research Science Summit Tim Transfer University Vice |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Class Of 2038: Universities 25 Years Down The Road

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/knowledge/business/gus

A Q and A with Professor Mark Taylor, Dean of Warwick Business School (WBS).

What do you think is currently the most under-hyped, yet significant, change universities in the UK will undergo within the next decade?

I think one aspect is the impact of the e-learning agenda and how that will change the way we think about universities. Already with the advent of MOOCs we are seeing an ‘unbundling’ of what universities offer. Universities offer knowledge production, knowledge dissemination, and a qualification and student experience; singularly if you like. Top universities offer all four of those. A MOOC offers you what? It doesn’t offer you knowledge production, doesn’t really offer you a qualification after completion; it doesn’t offer you a student experience. So it is just taking out all of those aspects. Its main purpose is knowledge dissemination. We may see the development of universities, over the next twenty-five years, that offer one or more but not all of those aspects of university life. So that may lead to a richness in university education. It may even lead to the development of different areas and niches within the higher education sector. People often like to refer to the ‘Napster moment’ in music, where people thought it would be the end of the universe. What the impact led to was an enrichment of the music industry because it forced the music industry to orientate itself more towards live performances for example, so it actually increased the quality of the provision of the music industry. In the same way I’d have thought e-learning, distance learning and the MOOC agenda will influence universities in a positive way over the next twenty-five years.

Another aspect that is interesting is so called ‘big data’; huge and complex data sets where, for years now, people have been bombarded with huge amounts of information and we are only just getting to grips with how we can actually analyse these data sets in meaningful ways. I think analysing those within institutions seeing how we can improve how we provide some of those elements universities provide like knowledge production, knowledge dissemination and student experience will be very important.

How can university business schools ‘bridge the valley of death’ between academia and industry?

A business school that doesn’t reach out and interact with business is just a school. So it is central to what a business school does and we have a central mission in the Business School. Our mission is to produce world class research, which is capable of influencing the way organisations operate and the way business is conducted. We are here to produce world class business leaders and managers; we are here to provide a return in investment for our students for our alumni during their entire careers as they go out into industry. So we are thinking of ourselves as always trying to integrate within the business industry. Already in the way the government assesses research, in the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework in 2014, is an important impact element which will measure the significance of research done in business schools and in universities in general, on society and the environment, as well as in business schools and business industry.

I think that will be an increasingly important element of the metrics of higher education going forward; it’s not good enough just to publish a paper in a top rate academic journal, there has to be the impact that flows from that. I for one welcome the metrics. The use of metrics in the past twenty or thirty years often had a distorting effect. I think that in this case, it will have a positive impact. At Warwick Business School, there are a number of initiatives we have undertaken in order to interface with business; we are, for example, appointing Professors of Practice. So we now have several professors within the school of the rank of professor who are not academics, who have spent their career within industry and business and achieved a very high level of distinction and been very successful. We have hired them and given them the rank of professor to teach on our MBA programme. They want to impart some of that knowledge, some of that experience to our MBA students and to our researchers as well.

If you could get one commitment from the G8 summit of world leaders, related to higher education, that would benefit the global sector, what would that be?

Quite simply it would be a commitment from world leaders to utilise the knowledge and skills within universities. Universities will generally provide a politically independent source of advice from a range of ideas. Going back to a previous question on how we bridge the gap between academia and industry, I think it’s also important how we bridge the gaps between academia and governments and policy. So really just utilising the skills, and experience and knowledge that exist within universities will go a long way towards benefiting the global economy and global society.

This blog is part of a regular series on the Knowledge Centre looking at issues in higher education ahead of the Global University Summit (May 28-30 2013), hosted by the University of Warwick in Whitehall, London. As part of the Summit, a declaration of commitment and policy recommendations will be drawn up for the G8 summit of world leaders, taking place in Northern Ireland in June.

Image: Model Delorean. Source: Flickr.

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Professor Mark P Taylor is Dean of Warwick Business School (WBS). Professor Taylor has outstanding credentials both in academia and in the business and policy worlds. He has held a professorship in international finance at Warwick since 1999. From 2006, on partial leave, he worked as a managing director at BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, where he led the European arm of the Global Market Strategies Group, a large global macro investment fund.

Professor Taylor's research on exchange rates and international financial markets has been published extensively in many of the leading academic and practitioner journals and he is one of the most highly cited researchers in finance and economics in the world.

Gareth Jenkins : 21 May 2013 12:05 |  Tags: Business Global Gus Mark School Summit Taylor University Warwick Wbs |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Universities do respond to business in the UK: Professor Dame Julia King

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/knowledge/business/gus

In the UK this year an amazing collection of examples of the impact of universities on the business world is being put together for our Research Excellence Framework exercise. If there was any real doubt about the value of university contributions to economic growth and business success these stories will dispel the myth. From major corporations siting their R&D facilities inside and alongside universities to ensure that their technology is at the cutting edge, to tiny companies having their immediate challenges solved by high quality advice from experts, the spectrum of different ways of working together that is evidenced by this exercise is impressive.

Too often universities are criticised for not providing employable graduates. In our current economic climate, undergraduates and postgraduates are even more actively engaged in seeking real experience of working with businesses through placements, collaborative research and increasingly setting up their own start-up companies. The evidence, from our programmes at Aston University, is very strong that incorporating extended placement activity within an undergraduate course increases the employability of the student and allows an ‘extended interview’ process for the employer. Universities are working hard to improve employability skills but we also need businesses to create high quality opportunities for placements. And it is easy to overlook the value of new graduates’ expertise in social media to enhance the marketing and innovation capability of companies – a skill which is second nature to them.

Big companies know how to get value from universities and there are real challenges for smaller companies. At Aston, our research suggests that medium-sized companies – around 20-50 employees – may hold the key to growth. The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme, led for the Midlands by Aston Business School, is supporting entrepreneur-led small and medium-sized business to expand and grow. We are now working with our fourth cohort of companies, with over 120 ‘graduates’ joining an alumni and networking organisation. There is a real thirst amongst these businesses to super charge their strategies for expansion. All have distinctive products or brands, have identified new markets, are generating revenue and improving their cash position. But they have not previously thought of bringing forward their five or ten year plan to exploit favourable market opportunities. The programme gives them the confidence and the ability to do just that, with practical help to improve financial planning, customer segmentation and marketing. After 18 months the programme has attracted a wide range of companies, from partners in the automotive supply chain to creative and digital agencies, social enterprises and food service brands. The learning and teaching methods involve total commitment, engagement and immersion; these are practical sessions not lectures.

The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme is a leading example of how a research-led university, with real world applicable knowledge, is able to work together with entrepreneur-led business to create growth and employment. The expertise of Aston University in bringing enterprise to the fore has been recognised by the creation of the UK’s first Enterprise Research Centre – in partnership with The University of Warwick – which will help many other businesses benefit from success.

The Centre will also have a significant role in advising government around strategies for growth, so we are confident that in the near future, medium-sized business may get the attention and support it warrants.

This blog is part of a regular series on the Knowledge Centre looking at issues in higher education ahead of the Global University Summit (May 28-30 2013), hosted by the University of Warwick in Whitehall, London. As part of the Summit, a declaration of commitment and policy recommendations will be drawn up for the G8 summit of world leaders, taking place in Northern Ireland in June.

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Professor Dame Julia King DBE FREng, Vice-Chancellor of Aston University (UK)

After sixteen years as an academic researcher and university lecturer at Cambridge and Nottingham universities, Julia King joined Rolls-Royce plc in 1994. At Rolls-Royce she held a number of senior executive appointments, including Director of Advanced Engineering for the Industrial Power Group, Managing Director of the Fan Systems Business, and Engineering Director for the Marine Business. In 2002, Julia became Chief Executive of the Institute of Physics, and in 2004 she returned to academia as Principal of the Engineering Faculty at Imperial College, London. In December 2006 she became Vice-Chancellor of Aston University.

Julia is a member of the Board of UniversitiesUK and Chair of its Employability, Business & Industry Policy Network, and a Council member of the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.

Main image: Birmingham Bullring. Source: Flickr. Published under the creative commons license.

Gareth Jenkins : 09 May 2013 17:20 |  Tags: Aston Business Centre Dame Enterprise Global Gus Julia King Research Summit University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem