What next for IDEAS?

IDEAS is an ongoing collaboration of the top business and management schools in the North West of England. Out recent ERDF project is just one of the vehicles for us to support business, develop and put into practice new knowledge exchange mechanisms and influence regional, national and international innovation policy and practice.

IDEAS tries to do things differently — developing knowledge exchange in a way that takes into account the needs and pressures of the businesses we aim to help, and reaping the benefits of such close collaboration by feeding experience back into research. We actively seek to pursue a range of funding mechanisms in order continue to make a tangible contribution within this area. The novel collaboration helps us to facilitate the engagement of more academics into knowledge exchange activities, more widely share experience of direct work with business and cross-polinate disparate research strands to more efficiently drive theoretical developments and relevance of research.

The IDEAS partnership seeks to further develop and build the following initiatives and mechanisms:

Develop new metrics, mapping and evaluation techniques to capture impact.
Model new ways of university and business collaboration and business to business cooperation (especially between large and small firms).
Create a learning network of innovative practice in knowledge exchange across NW Europe, especially supporting high tech SMEs.
To develop new levels and approaches to collaboration between universities on knowledge exchange and innovation.
Develop, trial and test new models for knowledge transfer.

IDEAS are currently pursuing the following options to take our work forward:

ESRC follow-on funding
Knowledge Transfer Associates (KTAs) for Daresbury and Harwell Science and Innovation Campuses
Technology Strategy Board (TSB) bids

However, our current major focus is:

INTERREG

IDEAS is currently developing a bid to lead a Strategic Initiative project under the INTERREG IVB North-West Europe programme, on the topic of innovation. This funding mechanism involves trans-national cooperation between groups in eligible areas, including Higher Education Institutes, public sector organisations and private partners.

If you are interested in finding out more about our INTERREG bid, please contact us.