Impact Acceleration for Academic-lead Knowledge Exchange Propositions at Kingston School of Art
Establishing a pilot accelerator programme, partnering with and equipping academic staff at Kingston School of Art with the intrapreneurial skills necessary to productively advance their innovative projects in alignment with the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF).
Background
Innovation and Knowledge Exchange are critical for universities to impact society and the economy through collaboration with external partners, ranging from businesses to community groups, as well as diversify income streams through commercialisation of IP, spin-outs and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs). In addressing this, Kingston University School of Art - inherently focused on humanities and creative spaces - faced the dual challenge and opportunity to shift traditional creative teaching and research approaches towards a more entrepreneurial model that emphasises practical, impactful knowledge exchange.
In the main, opportunities for KTPs or other business/impact partnerships, have been focused on supporting existing businesses through university services and academic expertise. However, this only showcases one side of the opportunity. Our recent research and experience have informed recommendations to uncover and engage with latent entrepreneurial capability and interest in the academic workforce, creating an ‘inside-out’ vehicle for developing collaborations and impact. We shared these insights in a recent blog on Knowledge Exchange, emphasising the importance of being customer-focused and impact-driven in academic innovation.
Brief
Recognising this - and through a desire to maximise the impact and potential of a number of budding, and in some cases established, propositions being led by Academic staff, the University asked us to provide a support layer to incubate and accelerate these ideas further and drive them towards tangible next steps and evolutions. The focus was on empowering academics to convert their research and ideas into enterprise-ready solutions - metrics that directly feed into the University’s Knowledge Exchange reporting. Our intrapreneurship accelerator pilot programme was designed to support them directly, enabling these ‘academic intrapreneurs’ to better understand and apply their research to meet real-world needs.
We conducted early-stage interviews with eight academics to understand the challenges faced around knowledge exchange more broadly. From these conversations, we identified a number of consistent blockers, including: commercial confidence, communicating value to stakeholders, and time and capacity constraints.
Incorporating these conversations into our approach, we delivered multiple workshops and coaching sessions that focused on:
Knowledge exchange and innovation Bootcamp, focusing on equipping participants with the skills to work with Lean, Agile and Design Thinking methods, prioritise customer needs and business evidence when taking the next steps, and hone in on the potential direct impact of an idea from the outset (a marked departure from a research-driven approach that incentives studies and academic papers over engagement and use-cases);
A highly practical hackathon session, in which participants worked with existing business associates and peers to directly develop their proposition, stress-test it against potential use cases and culminate in a pitch to an expert panel of local and broader knowledge exchange practitioners, including from Innovate UK and Kingston Council.
In between these sessions, participants had access to expert coaching from the Studio Zao team, designed to complement their ongoing work and support them in unblocking both knowledge and capacity needs (as identified in our preliminary assessment).
IMPACT
The programme enabled participants to:
Reimagine the application of their research and academic work to meet needs within the local socioeconomic fabric and wider communities.
Develop a roadmap for experimentation to de-risk ideas and advance them within the University’s funding and support infrastructure.
Build and maintain co-founding relationships with local industry partners.
Foster a supportive network among academics to navigate the intricacies of knowledge exchange, from idea generation to funding acquisition.
Outcomes
The programme led to the development of several actionable and socially impactful pitches for knowledge exchange, presented to a panel of local stakeholders across funding, government and education.
The pilot programme provided the School of Art with a replicable and scalable model for fostering further academic innovation and community engagement.
“Our workshops with Studio Zao were incredibly useful for supporting colleagues in developing their knowledge exchange projects. Moving into KE can be daunting for some academics but the input sessions from Studio Zao provided us with a range of tools and skills for getting started and growing these projects confidently. The advice and suggestions from Chris and Charlotte were thought provoking and inspiring, and I hope we are able to work with them again to support more colleagues to develop their work. Huge thanks to the Studio Zao team!”
Kate Scott, Director of Research, Business & Innovation, Kingston University
