This week’s Times Higher carries a news item about the current controversy over the new funding arrangements for the next round of the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF4).  The features of the HEIF 4 funding method are detailed n the HEFCE website.

Welcome to Action Track 1, one of the outcomes of the High Impact University Business, Enterprise and Innovation Workshop held on 18th December 2007. The High Impact University Business and Industry Community (HIUBI), has been launched to enable the Workshop participants to continue to work together to create more knowledge-based businesses and the four Action Tracks will drive this.

Action Track 1 will focus on facilitating interaction between university professionals within internal university communities. It will do so by:

• providing information and informing the development of new and essential tools for university professionals – we will do this by providing information about and seeking input for developments in these areas via the High Impact University Business and Industry (HIUBI) Action Tracker.
• Offering, as part of the High Impact University Business and Industry (HIUBI) Action Tracker, a ‘collaborators marketplace’ facility where universities can seek collaborators from other universities and industry.

Look at receipt of incoming enquirie - how do you ensure a KT enquiry gets ‘owned’ with a MAX of 3 (2?) phone transfers.

Co-owned ‘Observatory’ (eg Unico, IKT, AURIL, HEA).

It pools the activity and knowledge for the KT community - research, stats, metrics, contacts, grants, case studies etc….a first call site…linked to the co-owners sites.

Examine some existing links with Universities for further exploitation.

If there is enough interest Softcapital will provide and support a social network online platform for the ’serial entrepreneurs’ and existing spin out companies.

Softcapital will set up a new group on (IKT) www.ginnn.com for this group of people.

Feed back to IKT executive re: context of event and ways of developing academic incentive for engagement.

Community good - but need to look at focusing KT activities in UK within one organisation. Also need to ask business what their contribution to KT is.

Suggest to AURIL that the network is opened up to all tech transfer roles (incl. PSRE and private sector) so it isn’t just a university network.

Widen the discussion of impact measures at the South East Coastal Communities Project Board in January 2008.