News
INNOVATION BREAKFAST HAILED A HUGE SUCCESS
Businesses have been handed £120,000 in the West Midlands to help them grow with help from one of 13 universities. Forty small and medium businesses (SMEs) each won £3,000 innovation vouchers to spend with Higher Education Institutions in the region on developing their company. The INDEX – INnovation Delivers EXpansion – project is the first of its kind in the UK and was open to companies with up to 250 employees. It is being coordinated by Dr Judy Scully of Aston Business School in Birmingham.
Bosses gathered with university academics for a celebration breakfast at Aston Business School in Birmingham on Thursday,(SEPT 6) hosted by Central News presenter Llewela Bailey.
There were more than 200 applications for the funding, from which the 40 successful firms were chosen at random. A further 40 will benefit in the next round of the £250,000 project, with applications opening in April 2008. John Bailey, pro-vice chancellor for information transfer at Aston Business School, said: “When a few of us from Aston Business School sat down about three years ago to think about a better way to communicate with SMEs, I don’t think we quite realised what we were taking the cap off.
“We wanted to find a way that enabled SMEs to define their needs – it was their agenda we were interested in rather than the university’s.”
Julia King, Vice-Chancellor of Aston University which co-ordinated the INDEX scheme, told the breakfast: “Today is an opportunity to celebrate this new type of relationship between SMEs and universities, which we hope will be fruitful and will grow. “You are the first of what we hope is going to be a very big national initiative and we believe this scheme will serve to address some of the issues SMEs have raised about approaching Higher Education Institutions for help.”
INDEX is funded by the Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands, the Economic & Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The voucher will allow companies to work with their chosen university to develop an innovative project, aimed at driving their business forward.
The INDEX project will begin its second phase in the spring, when more businesses will be able to make the simple application for a voucher.
For more details visit www.indexvouchers.org
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