Building industrial engagement and impact

Sponsor:
Professor Matthias Ruth, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research

Key contacts:
Professor Sarah Thompson, Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research)
Amanda Selvaratnam, Associate Director (Business and Knowledge Exchange) Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange

What are we transforming?

By expanding and improving our industrial engagement, we will increase the influence our research has on economic prosperity whilst providing wider benefits to society, culture and the environment. 

We will be known for our ambitious and effective industry engagement, and the value we place on this, and we will emphasise the importance of building and sustaining long-term, strategic partnerships across all three faculties.

Across the University, there is a strong ambition to embrace the action-oriented focus of the new University Strategy, and to accelerate the translation of our world leading discovery-led research to deliver impact. 

Achieving this ambition requires investment and culture change to ensure that the value we place on this activity is clear and effectively supported. Additional capacity will be provided by the investment into new staff posts. We will work with the academic and professional service community to identify areas of strength and to design and test our approach to delivering new ways of engaging with existing and new industrial partners.

We will improve all forms of industry engagement including collaborative and contract research, consultancy, continuing professional development and access to our specialist facilities. We will ultimately transform our approach to:

• academic appointments, leadership, career paths and rewards for working with industry
• planning, creating, growing and managing industry partnerships
• communicating our potential and co-creating projects with industry
• supporting engagement through specialist staffing, systems and processes.

Our success will be measured by the effectiveness of our relationships with business and industry and by the impact we deliver. Our wider University strategic principles of inclusion, environmental sustainability, internationalism and collaboration will guide the types of relationships we seek and sustain. This approach will ensure our reputation is enhanced not only with industry, but also with our potential students and other research collaborators and partners.

Latest update

The Building Industry Engagement and Impact Programme is entering its second year of delivery. During the first year, the programme team established the structure and support mechanisms for how this ambitious initiative would be delivered. Significant work has taken place to develop and deliver;

• A new external branding identity, known as Solved with York, for how York will communicate with industry and external partners.
• The recruitment of new dedicated industry-related professional services staff.
• New “engaging with industry” training programmes have been delivered for academic and professional services staff. A new webpage has been developed for staff which will be developed further to include useful resources and guidance for working with business and industry. 
• University of York has joined the Northern Accelerator, a partnership aimed at creating businesses and high-value jobs across the North East.
• A new internal fund to support ambitious new partnership projects to accelerate their development has been launched.

The priorities for this year are to

• Recruit the first cohort of industry-facing academics who will champion, lead and inspire research, collaborations and engagement with industry. View our recruitment campaign.
• Recruit and develop a new business development team and introduce an institution wide Community of Practice
• Provide support for growth through the roll-out of a new partnership development framework to provide improved relationship management support for our partners.
• Further develop recruitment opportunities and practice-based career pathways for staff. 

If you'd like to know more, you can view our latest slideshow presentation:

• Building Industry Engagement and Impact Slideshow November 2023 (PDF , 783kb)