A Celebration of Innovation
Friday 4th June 2010, Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus
On Friday 4th June 2010, we held an event to showcase our work with high-tech SMEs over the 16 months of the IDEAS ERDF project.
Date
Friday, 4th June 2010
9.30 am – 3.30 pm
Held
Daresbury Laboratory Atrium.
Upstairs in the STFC Reception Building, Daresbury Science & Innovation Campus (DSIC)
Purpose
To celebrate and disseminate the work of IDEAS at Daresbury between March 2009 and June 2010 at DSIC.
As part of the IDEAS at Daresbury ERDF project, we invited participating companies and regional stakeholders to an event to celebrate the success of the project and disseminate on the process, successes and impact of the project.
Over 70 people attended the event including academics from Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester Universities, key policy makers, Business Link advisers, a variety of knowledge exchange providers, regional stakeholders and SMEs — both IDEAS participants and others, interested in understanding and accessing business support in the North West.
The event was split into 2 distinct sections:
AM — For Businesses and those involved in Business Support:
- Sample the innovative business support delivered to hi-tech SMEs in the DSIC network
- Listen to feedback from participating businesses
- Identify future opportunities for business support
The aims of the morning session were to showcase the IDEAS at Daresbury support over the last 16 months as well as signpost businesses onto further business support available. Eight stands were present advertising activities from all three Universities as well as Business Link North West. John Chisholm, Innovation Manager, Business Link NW; gave a short talk regarding Innovation in North West SMEs before each of the Universities gave a short taster session of one of the three workshop series that had taken place. The morning session ended with three of the IDEAS participants speaking about what they had got out of the IDEAS at Daresbury collaboration from both the workshops and follow on support that was provided.
PM — For Policy Makers, Academics, Funding Bodies, Regional Stakeholders, Practitioners and Businesses:
- IDEAS at Daresbury project overview
- Keynote speeches
- The challenges of evaluating projects like IDEAS at Daresbury
- The future of IDEAS at Daresbury
The afternoon session concentrated on the top level of IDEAS at Daresbury with talks from Professor Jeremy Howells, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester; John Leake, General Manager, Daresbury SIC; Jim Keane, Head of Innovation and Knowledge Transfer, NWDA and the evaluation team at Manchester Business School headed by Dr Paul Cunningham. The day ended with a short discussion regarding the future of IDEAS at Daresbury.