Innovation - the successful commercial exploitation of new ideas - is vital to the UK's ability to compete in an increasingly competitive global knowledge economy. Harnessing the excellence of our science base as a platform for innovation is a key UK policy goal, requiring new approaches to education and management. If more of the UK’s leading-edge research is to be transformed into market-ready products and services, the links in the innovation cycle must be strengthened.

To facilitate this, the Cambridge-MIT Institute has been helping universities and businesses identify how to work closer together by providing comparative US/UK studies about the innovation process. Researchers need the right skills and incentives to take their ideas to market so we have also invested in new educational programmes that combine scientific research with management and business skills.

Developing Education for Innovation

The Cambridge-MIT Institute has focused on current educational practices, looking at what they need to do to prepare students for a career on either side of the University-Industry relationship. As part of this, we have created a number of educational programmes to equip students with key skills and attitudes as well as deep technical knowledge, and thereby enhance their ability to engage in innovation.

Our portfolio of Executive Education programmes, research seminars and events help equip managers in technology-intensive firms with a sound knowledge of the dynamics of innovation and the strategies that can be used to exploit new products in the market place. These programmes are run by the Cambridge-MIT Institute’s Centre for Competitiveness and Innovation – a community of researchers that works with business to understand better how value is created, delivered and captured from product and process innovation.

So how do you best design work placements to enhance the enterprise skills of science and engineering students? And how measure the impact of entrepreneurship education on students and how it increases their skills and ability to innovate? These are questions that our Education for High-Growth Innovation project has been working with businesses and universities to address. One study measuring the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education on undergraduates uses the Enterprisers course (founded by the Cambridge-MIT Institute), as a test-bed, evaluating the impact of entrepreneurship teaching on students’ entrepreneurial capabilities and intent, and convening a consortium of other universities to share the results.

Benchmarking Success

The Cambridge-MIT Institute funds research that sheds light on key issues in UK innovation. Our International Innovation Benchmarking Study, conducted by leading researchers at Cambridge and MIT, quizzed 3,600 British and American firms for insights into their business practices, in order better to understand the role of universities in the innovation process. The report provided for the first time a like-for-like comparison of the innovative behaviour of UK and US firms - giving valuable insights to industry bodies and policy-makers. The report yielded a number of important findings, including the discovery that while more UK than US businesses (two-thirds UK compared to one-third US) use universities as a source of knowledge for innovation, US businesses tend to value their interactions with universities more highly.

The report also found that companies in the United States are more concerned about taxation, legislation and regulation than their British counterparts, and that they are more worried about a lack of skilled labour and getting access to finance. "I was surprised by the data from this survey on 'innovation inputs' that suggested that firms in the US find life just as challenging, and in many cases, harder than those in the UK,” said Ian McCafferty, Chief Economist at the CBI. “Clearly the popular impression of the US - that it offers a much better climate for innovation than the UK - does not fully stack up."

CASE STUDY: NEW MASTER'S DEGREES

" Cambridge University and MIT are breaking new ground by developing this suite of Masters programmes which blend science and engineering with business and enterprise. Their focus on emerging technologies will equip graduates with the skills necesary to respond creatively to the issues facing an increasingly complex global environment"

Lord Sainsbury of Turville

The Cambridge-MIT Institute has brought together academic staff at Cambridge and MIT to develop and deliver six new MPhils at Cambridge University – Masters level degrees aimed at enterprising young scientists and engineers. The programmes offer students the latest teaching in their field – be it nanotechnology, biotechnology, sustainable development or chemical engineering – and a central module in the Management of Technology and Innovation, otherwise known as MOTI. All MPhil students take MOTI, where they work on a six-week consultancy project for a real client. To date, over sixty companies, ranging from start-ups to multinational corporations, have worked with MOTI students. BT’s Innovations Central received five students from the MPhil in Chemical Engineering Practice, and was delighted with the calibre of their contributions. The MPhil students were drafted in to help assess how effective Innovation Central has been in creating and delivering BT’s innovation strategy.

“Everything that they came up with was useful,” says Gordon Wright, Consultant at BT Innovation Central. “Because the students hadn’t been involved in the projects beforehand, their insights were completely new and fresh,” said Gordon. “The students built up comprehensive case studies, the quality of which was so high that I plan to use them in future to describe to potential clients the work that Innovation Central does.”

MOTI gives students vital, first-hand experience of the reality of managing innovation and running a high-tech business. This experience seems to be paying real dividends for the students. In two out of the last three years, students from these programmes have won the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs competition, going on to launch their own companies commercially.