Dr Joe Marshall of the National Centre for Universities and Business explains the ambitions of konfer, a new tool for enhancing university-industry collaboration.
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In 2016, the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) launched konfer – an intelligent brokerage tool that has been created to improve the ease with which university-business collaboration can be enabled and maintained.
Driving the creation of such a tool has been a commitment to open up collaborative opportunities within our world-leading universities to more businesses. Traditionally the preserve of large corporates with the capacity to search out and connect with different universities, smaller companies are underrepresented in interactions with the university research base. In a knowledge-based economy, business-led innovation is an area of increased focus. More businesses will need to identify new, innovative solutions through collaboration with new partners, such as universities.
The UK’s university research base presents an extraordinary array of opportunities that are increasingly being utilised by businesses.
The UK’s university research base presents an extraordinary array of opportunities that are increasingly being utilised by businesses. From the latest in research outputs to access to cutting edge facilities and equipment, universities are becoming natural collaboration partners. But for a small company wanting to collaborate and innovate there are almost too many doors to knock on to seek out expertise. Simply knowing where to start can be overwhelming.
Konfer supports small, innovative companies to help them identify opportunities for collaboration across the entire university research base. It will enable businesses, charities and cultural organisations to identify an array of collaborative opportunities including researchers, facilities, funding and support. But it is hoped that konfer will becomes a two-way exchange and also be used by universities and in particular academics to find opportunities to work with businesses.
This idea of exchange underpins the konfer name – which plays on the idea of active dialogue, communication and conferring between two parties with a focus on knowledge development (hence the use of the k to form konfer).
Pulling in
To facilitate and foster this dialogue and collaborations between businesses and universities, the early focus for konfer has been on the identification of information and data sources that highlight the collaborative opportunities available within universities. Through konfer, users can see in one place the array of different opportunities available in every university across the UK. These opportunities extend beyond just research or the researchers undertaking it. konfer is harvesting information about opportunities to access facilities and equipment available at universities as well as funding opportunities to facilitate research and development activities. This information is all drawn from publicly available sources, such as university websites, the Research Councils Gateway to Research platform, the equipment.data database that provides the asset register of universities as well as academic profiles from ORCID (a registry of unique researcher identifiers).
Konfer collates the harvested information and presents different groups of results to the user (research, researcher, equipment or facilities and funding opportunities). Users can see the array of opportunities available to them for collaboration. The user can search and discover the returned results and, with a powerful synonym library built in, refine the search to increase the specificity. Konfer has also built in a map function such that the results are presented back to the user by location. Each of the collaboration opportunities have been geo-tagged and the map view allows users to look at opportunities that are nearby (or beyond regions where they normally collaborate).
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Pushing out
Much of the early focus with konfer has been on identifying and harvesting useful information to highlight collaboration opportunities. However, for both businesses and academics the opportunities may be more specific and nuanced. Konfer enables specific requests for collaboration to be posted and pushed out to users of the tool. As the community using konfer grows, it is anticipated that this will become the dynamic engine room for the tool. Businesses can post collaboration requests that instantly reach all or a subset of universities and academics across the UK. Academics and universities can push out in more targeted ways new ideas and opportunities that can reach all or a subset of businesses using konfer across the UK.
Linking up
A key feature of konfer from the outset has been the ability to make connections through the tool. The harvested information is not the end itself. It provides an extensive view of the array of opportunities in universities across the UK but these are enablers to trigger collaborations. Konfer has been designed to enable both business and university users to connect to each other. Each university will have different points of entry and different mechanisms for managing enquires and collaboration requests. The National Centre will work with its university members to make sure that these enquiries reach the right point of contact but also to make sure that queries are responded to in a timely fashion. In developing konfer, it has been invaluable to get feedback from universities about how enquires can best be channeled and directed. Digital tools, like konfer, can easily organise and group enquiries into different categories matching the offers of an institution or academic. If a university is not able to respond or does not have the capacity to engage, the National Centre will aim to forward the query to another suitable university.
We are actively piloting the tool with particular sectors and working with DEFRA to support the Food Innovation Network.
Early testing
The National Centre launched an alpha-version of konfer in May 2016 to enable users to test it and feed into the tool as it develops further. We are actively piloting the tool with particular sectors and working with DEFRA to support the Food Innovation Network, that will be launching later in the autumn.
In launching konfer in 2016, the National Centre and partners will be seeking to move from an aspiration into an operating and delivering platform. It hopes to open up more businesses and universities to more collaborations.
Dr Joe Marshall is Chief Operating Officer and Director of Strategy for the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) User feedback is critical to help shape and evolve the tool. To access konfer go to: Web: www.konfer.online Email: joe.marshall@ncub.co.uk
