Daresbury Workshops
A knowledge exchange project, funded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA) was delivered by IDEAS at Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus (DSIC) between March 2009 and June 2010.
Aiming to drive innovation into high tech SMEs, the programme was structured to have a deep and lasting impact on participants. Academic expertise was distilled down to help solve business-critical issues frequently experienced by small businesses, and particularly focussing on the areas of business skills that are often lacking in technology-led businesses.
This section outlines how the project was delivered to provide innovation support for SMEs in the North West of England. Businesses were invited to sign up to workshop programmes, each of which was designed to address company issues within a particular theme:
- Customer Focussed Innovation
- Competitive Advantage through People and Processes
- Beyond Networking: Creativity, Collaboration and Growth
Each programme consisted of 4 or 5 half day sessions, run week on week at DSIC. Unlike a traditional academic session, the workshops were highly interactive and practical, capturing the attention of participants, and allowing them to gain a deep understanding of subjects via examples, exercises and discussion. This allowed participants to accumulate knowledge piece by piece in an area that they needed support with, to build business critical capabilities and ultimately impact company success.
Sessions concentrated on issues that are critical for small businesses, and primarily aimed to build business-based capabilities and skills to complete the technical expertise of high-tech specialist participants. Academic expertise was tailored to bring value for participants from the highly time and resource constrained small-business environment.
Knowledge was embedded by peer-to-peer learning structured into the programme: discussion between participants encouraged openness, creative thinking and problem solving, which in turn led to legitimacy for and a new willingness to tackle issues. This was consolidated by bespoke follow on support for companies - from one-to-one consultancy, to intensive ‘master class’ sessions and post-graduate student projects from the 3 partner universities.
For a clearer understanding of how the programme worked and the contributions of the IDEAS partners, take a look at our timeline.
This programme structure provided North West high tech SMEs with access to the best and most relevant expertise for them, to help with their most pressing business issues: building capabilities, inspiring innovation and, ultimately, improving competitiveness, survival and growth.