When Professor Lynn Martin asked us if we, a mixed group of
scholars, entrepreneurs and government officials who were invited by MMU’s
Centre for Enterprise to learn from their experiences, could contribute to their
blog, we of course immediately responded positively. Why not share the insights
we discussed during two inspiring days in Manchester with some of the brightest
minds representing the best higher education institutions and businesses in both
the United Kingdom and the Netherlands? After all, we came to Manchester[1] to share
our insights to learn from each other and to inspire each other, and all these
thoughts and ideas are definitely not restricted to the participants only but
are there to share.
One of the recurrent insights we had is that we all, either as
an Higher Education institution, enterprise, big or small, or government agency
cannot do things on our own, but that we need each others’ brains, insights and
ideas to grow further and to cope with the challenges that lies ahead of us. This
need to share also applies to multinationals like Unilever, e.g. Unilever takes
on students from the University of Delft to help solve problems that the teams
of Unilever cannot solve themselves for several reasons. Advantages of this way
of cooperation are huge. Students get an invaluable experience in a
multinational on real problems, Unilever gets to know its potential future
employees in a natural way and moreover, a new person with fresh views and
ideas to the teams ensures a higher percentage of success in solving problems.
Also large institutions like Universities value the richness
of cooperation with other organisations and enterprises. For example the University of Plymouth and
the University of Maastricht both execute an SME programme at their university
to ensure that ideas born and bred within the Ivory tower of the University actually
have the opportunity to be commercialised. Universities cannot do this
themselves and therefore not SME’s to do this for them.
These are only a few examples of cooperation within large
institutions. Of course, as an SME, you do not have the time nor the resources
to take on a team of students like Unilever, nor do you have the time to
research which university is breading the ideas and innovations you would just
need as an SME to enable growth in your organisation. However, what I want you
to take away from this is to review what your company needs for growth and in
what way you could enable this growth by looking for cooperation methods and
partnerships or by finding smart ways to solve your R&D issues by taking on
students for an apprenticeship who are currently studying the subject at
University. This way, you’ll get the
newest ideas and research within your company for a small amount of money and
moreover you give a young person the possibility to gain experience in the work
space. Our advice is therefore, use the resources around your doorstep in a
smart way that fits your company.
On behalf of the working group Enterprise & Exploration
of the 2012 Apeldoorn Conference in Manchester,
Angelique Meyer
Angelique
Meyer is Chief Representative of the Netherlands Business Support Office (NBSO)
in Manchester. The NBSO is part of the Netherlands government and supports
Dutch companies that want to trade in the North of England. For information on
doing business with the Dutch, please feel free to contact the NBSO via info@nbso-manchester.co.uk
[1]
From 11th – 13th of March 2012 the Apeldoorn
Conference took place in Manchester. For this conference British and Dutch high
level scholars, policy makers, HR professionals of Anglo-Dutch multinationals,
like Unilever and Shell and government officials gathered in Manchester in the
Museum of Science and Industry to discuss the subjectof Higher Education at the Heart of Growth. The
Apeldoorn Conference is a bi-lateral policy dialogue initiated by former Prime
Ministers Mr Tony Blair and Mr Wim Kok in 1992 in Apeldoorn (www.apeldoornconference.org)
As part of this conference, the
working group, that discussed the subject of Enterprise and Exploration,
visited Manchester Metropolitan University and its Centre for Enterprise to
learn from the experiences at MMU’s Centre for Enterprise.
