PraxisUnico welcomes the announcement by the Scottish Government of the establishment of an Innovation Forum as part of its Innovation Scotland initiative to help facilitate increased knowledge exchange between Scotland's Universities and its business communities.
The establishment of this Forum and the other national infrastructure projects such as the increased role for Interface - the knowledge connection for business and a company formation framework to encourage postgraduate student business creation - follows two years of consultation on the suggested creation of a Single Knowledge Exchange Office for Scotland.
PraxisUnico was one of the professional organisations originally asked to submit evidence to the consultation group (see the PraxisUnico evidence here) and we welcome the fact that no single office is to be established as we believe that the creation of such a body would not have achieved increased knowledge exchange. Effective exchange relies on local knowledge and interaction between KE professionals, researchers and customers. We are also pleased to note that the strong collaborative work of the Scottish Universities to create such initiatives as UT.com and template contracts have been recognised as important contributors to knowledge exchange, and that they will be further developed through Interface. We also believe the company creation framework could enhance Scotland's position as one of the leading regions in the UK for new company creation.