Get In Tune With Knowledge Transfer

As the air begins to crackle with excitement around Belfast’s first MTV awards, we who work in and around Queens Island (Titanic Quarter) prepare for our daily commute to be doubled in length. However, we know the cash registers in hotels, pubs and clubs will jangle happily for a few days; so why not celebrate Belfast’s coming of age as a destination?

My question is, really, “Why not celebrate to the same extent our other successes of similar scale?”

Have you heard of Northern Ireland’s recent success in the UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) programme, not just once but for the second year running, an unprecedented achievement in the long history of the programme? Do you even know what the programme is?

KTP ( http://www.ktponline.org.uk/ ) is a programme linking academic research with business to solve a problem and to ensure the transfer of the solution into the business. It was originally called the Teaching Company Scheme. Cleverly, I thought, to reflect the accepted status and effectiveness of the Teaching Hospital, i.e. practical experience closely allied to the best academic learning and guaranteeing that both elements were of high quality. Under both names it has been officially recognised as the most successful technology transfer scheme in Europe.

Key to the success of the scheme, in addition to the quality checks, is that Board of the company must agree formally that the topic is in the top three of its business problems and that they will invest if the project is successful; only then are project costs shared between state and business. A graduate (the Associate), working in a highly relevant research area takes on the problem, with the help of his academic and industrial supervisors, and carries the solution personally into the business, ensuring technology-transfer.

Northern Ireland, greatly to its credit, embraced the scheme whole-heartedly and became pre-eminent in its execution in both our universities. Names and organisations have changed (the sponsoring departments are now the Technology Strategy Board and Invest NI) but the principles and effectiveness are the same.

So it was fitting that two young graduates (Paul Beaney and Justyna Grabowska) took the national award for their work in Cherry Pipes and in the Polymer Processing Research Centre at QUB under Gerry McNally and Alan Clarke. You can see the whole event for yourself at http://www.bit.ly/Live11 (courtesy of our very own Switch New Media, NI’s webcaster to and for the world) when the team received their award from Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Science.

In a nutshell, through the scheme, the Cherry family firm worked with Queens to transform their business from ordinary (concrete pipe maker) to top-notch polymer recycler of sufficient standing not only to be in but to lead a European FP7 Research Programme, oh, and multiply turnover and profit.

They are exactly the type of company doing the right type of collaboration that we want to replicate as we build a Knowledge Economy here. With the launch of the NI Knowledge Economy Index last week we should now be able to measure our successes much better in future – but more on that next week.

Do have a look and perhaps reflect on what might be if every £2m turnover business took a leaf out of the Cherry Pipes book.  I think you’ll agree that such an outcome would be worth as many cheers as will be evident at MTV!