Following a highly successful and well-received keynote speech at the November 2008 HERDA-SW Annual Conference in Torquay, we are pleased to announce that Alan Hayman has published a paper based on the presentation.
Alan is a Chartered Engineer who has moved from engineering into general management and has held various regional and national non-executive positions, including amongst others Chairman of SWMAS, Vice President of EEF Western and member of the Learning and Skills Council.
With over forty years in the telecommunications, process automation and defence sectors, Alan’s paper draws on this business experience to look at what is meant by collaboration, particularly between business and the Higher Education sector. He provides a summary of industrial and academic development through the 20th century and finally proposes a new business paradigm for the 21st century.
He illustrates that although business and Higher Education should co-operate to achieve the best possible outcomes, lack of trust often puts barriers in the way of effective partnerships. Trust, openness and working together for mutual benefit are what true collaboration is all about.
On the issue of Intellectual Property Rights, Alan argues that in the early stages of highly complex projects that can benefit from a collaboration of all the available expertise from companies, universities and sole traders, legal barriers should be kept to a minimum to ensure key players are not excluded.
The areas of knowledge spillage, the small world concept, the myth of manufacturing decline, intellectual capital and global networks are also covered in the paper. Alan concludes that collaboration must be recognised and used as a real opportunity for business to remain competitive.
Click here to view the full paper From Concept to Creation by Collaboration.