Blog: KE Matters

The 49 PraxisAuril members with RTTPs

5 Jun 2019

The RTTP accreditation is helping our members strategise with the rollout of the #KEF & provides international benchmarking in Knowledge Exchange.

As ATTP announces 500 global RTTPs, we celebrate our 49 member organisations with RTTPs:

The KT Boundary

24 May 2019

 

As it’s a Friday afternoon before a bank holiday in the UK  I wanted to muse about the future and the distant past.

The geologists amongst you will be familiar with the KT Boundary - between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary periods. Below the boundary layer, there’s loads of evidence of animal life.  Above the boundary - nothing.  It is generally agreed that this was caused by the huge meteorite which changed the environment and wiped out most life forms on Earth 65 million years ago. Since we work in what is sometimes called Knowledge Transfer I get particularly sensitive when people talk about a KT Boundary and I wondered that as the environment around us changes that we might be in our own KT boundary moment today? 

 

How do R&D teams evaluate new opportunities?

14 May 2019

We’re often asked by the universities that use IN-PART’s matchmaking platform for university-industry collaboration what R&D teams are looking for in new potential collaborators. So, to provide some answers, we spoke with our industry community and asked them what informs their decisions to establish new partnerships with universities.

HEIF, KEF and now KEC: welcoming the KE Concordat

3 May 2019

Alice Frost, Director of Knowledge Exchange at Research England, blogs about today's launch of the KE Concordat (KEC) as the latest initiative from the university sector responding to challenges set by the Government's Industrial Strategy and the 2.4% R&D target. 

A Concordat for High Standards in Knowledge Exchange

3 May 2019

  Sean Fielding, Chair of PraxisAuril, blogs about today's launch of the KE Concordat (KEC).

I am delighted to see the KEF Concordat published today.  PraxisAuril has been closely involved with the development of the Concordat with both me and Tony Raven, CEO of Cambridge Enterprise, on the drafting group.

Our view is that the Concordat will be another important tool to demonstrate that the UK's KE sector is world leading and highly effective. The proposals in the Concordat - to ensure that universities provide proper training, best practice sharing and recognition and accreditation of skills for KE and academic staff - will be welcomed by the 107 UK universities that are already members of PraxisAuril because of the conferences, training and resources that we provide. PraxisAuril now has 185 members drawn from around the world, which is recognition of the high reputation of UK knowledge exchange.

Chair's Blog APRIL 2019: Increasing R&D budget with significant economic and social impact

10 Apr 2019

Chris Skidmore the HE Minister calls himself the minister of 2.4% - ie minister for raising R&D from 1.7% of GDP to 2.4% or from around £35BN to about £50BN.  The biggest component of this is business R&D (at around £25BN).  That implies a growth in business R&D of £10BN.  That’s a huge task – unless somehow we can contrive to reduce our GDP through a slow motion cross-border crisis!  But the fact that the HE Minister sees himself as responsible for this must put the UK Knowledge exchange community firmly in his sights as the people who can help make this possible.  The announcement last week of an increase in HE-BCI collaboration between universities and business of about 6% to £4.5BN despite GDP growth slowing to almost nothing must have put a spring in his step.  But there’s clearly much more to do.