Lancaster Environment Centre

The Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) celebrated ten years of working with business and industry this year. In the last 3 years a key feature of this success has been the co-location of over 20 businesses into the heart of LEC.

Concept

Via dedicated office accommodation, companies can move or locate a dedicated team within the centre, with the aim of growing a partnership to develop new products and services through collaborative knowledge transfer. The company partner resources an office at LEC to provide a physical base for one or more members of their staff who work with our Enterprise and Business Partnerships Team (EBP) to identify and exploit specific opportunities for strategic collaboration. The EBP team also work to secure funding from a range of agencies and organisations.

Aims

Partnership aims to have a measurable positive impact on a company’s profitability and provide access to funding for research and development to stimulate new products and services. Independent evaluation has established that collaboration with the University can have a positive and significant effect on the profitability of your company.

Proximity

Our experiences over the last 2 years lead us to confidently conclude that proximity is the biggest driving factor behind strategic collaboration. This is evidenced by third party evaluation and by several specific evaluations that have taken place on Lancaster University and LEC in recent years. Co-location enables seconded staff and their businesses to embed themselves within the heart of the LEC community. Company staff, academics and research groups are able to interact on a day-to-day basis about new opportunities and have direct access to the EBP team who work to fund collaborative activities. The services of the EBP team are only available to co-located companies. The value of this community is further enhanced by the opportunity to collaborative with other businesses and co-located partners such as the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the Environment Agency.

What does the partner commit to?

• A physical presence in the building
• A commitment to staff the collaboration appropriately
• A commitment to pro-active collaboration
• Established track record of innovation in new product and service development

What does LEC bring to the table?

Access to world class research

• 40% of all NW environmental research happens in Lancaster University
• One of the top 3 environmental science departments in the UK
• Opportunities to access public funds for collaborative R&D
• Enhance and improve current services and products
• Develop new services and products
• Access to high quality university staff and students

Opportunities to partner with the University in the delivery of training

• Access to modern training facilities
• Potential accreditation of course provision by the University
• Partnership on collaborative bids to develop training

Access to international markets

• Become a partner in one of several international collaborative programmes
• Dedicated access to business support for overseas trade

Access to the wider LEC community

• Collaboration with other LEC companies
• Access to expertise within the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
• Monthly company breakfast meetings
• Annual events programme with national partners
• Dedicated relationship manager, from within the EBP team

Access to the wider university community through LEC contacts

• Access to support from our international Management School
• Access to significant social sciences expertise
• Access to InfoLab21 – the NW centre for ICT expertise

Access to high quality graduates

• Opportunities for student placements throughout the year
• Assisted recruitment of graduates into your business

Soft landing package for office accommodation

• Tailor-made deals to fit your specific collaborative arrangements

Facts and Figures

Proximity and collaboration (from the literature)

• Innovative companies are 23% more likely to co-operate with relevant university departments and 29% more likely to source knowledge from them if they are located within 10km.
• In the U.S, award winning innovations occurring from private collaboration with universities have increased from under 20% in 1971 to over 70% in 2006, whereas innovations occurring totally within the private organisations have decrease from over 80% in 1971 to under 30% in 2006.

Lancaster University and our impact on business (established by a Lancaster University Management School evaluation in 2008):

• Micro-Enterprises assisted by Lancaster University had an increase in annual sales turnover of £44k, whilst medium enterprises grew by £1.5m.
• Micro-Enterprises experienced on average a 167% increase in annual sales after Lancaster’s intervention, small enterprises 5,204%, and medium enterprises 26%.
• Lancaster’s assistance helped enterprises to generate between 12% and 19% of extra profits
• After Lancaster’s intervention 78% of assisted businesses developed a more strategic approach or vision for the enterprises, of these 85% said it was due to Lancaster.

Lancaster Environment Centre’s impact on business (as established by an independent evaluation of our work by InnerCity Solutions Ltd. in 2009):

• Businesses co-located within LEC have indicated that the project has facilitated an increase in business performance. The majority of companies attributing a 5-10% turnover rise through their involvement with the project, and some businesses attribute co-location to a much larger increase in turnover in the region of 30 – 50%.
• For those co-located companies surveyed, all of them confirmed they operated within the ETS sector, with a split in the following areas: Chemicals management (30%), Consultancy (30%), Environmental engineering (20%), Recycling (10%), and Agricultural technology (10%).
• 83% of businesses confirmed that they were either “Very Satisfied” or “Satisfied” with the overall service.
• Accordingly, many businesses identified an increase in staffing levels as a result of the co-location programme. Two-thirds of all businesses interviewed confirmed that they had taken on 1-2 employees permanently.

Case studies of the value of University-business co-location

Waitrose and Lancaster University

The collaboration between Lancaster University and Waitrose incorporates a framework agreement under which Waitrose, its supply chain and the University through the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) join in research projects and staff training focused on issues concerning climate change and environmentally sensitive agronomy. This is a domain core to both Waitrose known brand values and the LEC’s work. The approach introduced the potential of working together rather than a particular project which provided a strong basis for a developing partnership. It originated in an approach from Lancaster not with a specific project in mind but indicating a willingness to collaborate on projects of mutual interest. The collaboration is in its second period and this time has allowed the university, the company and its supply chain to identify how best to work together for mutual benefit.

The BBC and University Collaboration

The BBC collaborates with universities not necessarily only to increase their permanent capability but also in order to enhance its services through the inclusion of academic staff in its service delivery. In the case of the BBC this is achieved by involving academic staff in the development and delivery of programmes. This is done frequently through the inclusion of academic specialists as commentators and contributors on news and public affairs programmes but may be more intensive in more specialised programmes.

ARUP and BP’s evaluation of the impact of research collaboration

ARUP and BP evaluate the success of collaborations by evaluating the extent to which they are used in the business. For example, at ARUP success in collaborative projects is measured by the implantability of the research outcomes into professional practice guides within the company – the ARUP collaborator would take reports, presentations etc from academic partners and translate these into these guides. Assessment of the effectiveness is based on observed change in practice. In the case of the BP Institute at Cambridge, a project will typically produce as an outcome fresh awareness of the nature of the problems, challenging accepted assumptions and questioning whether there are more fundamental scientific or mathematical approaches which would be better. The results are an improved understanding of the problem. This makes it hard to track the stand-alone impact of individual projects as the work of the Institute would often simply be incorporated into the company’s thinking and thereby affect different types of activities, from further research through development to operations within the business.

US Weather Research Station and North Carolina State University

According to officials at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the probability of detection of thunderstorms rose from 59% to 89% after they moved their National Weather Service Research Centre to the Centennial Campus at North Carolina State University. NOAA attributes this to faculty and student partnerships possible because of their location.

British Telecom and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Openness to and adoption of ideas generated by interactions with other businesses and academe requires action by any company to secure and internalise the benefits. BT is supported by an embedded company team of two people actually in MIT itself, and the BT university liaison team spends a substantial amount of its staff resource on ensuring that the 100 senior managers in BT are aware of, and can appreciate the significance of developments with the company’s open innovation partners.

Contact information

If you would like further information on these offices view our Frequently Asked Questions or if you have any queries please feel free to contact us:

Martin Gilmore
Business Partnerships Manager

Tel: 01524 510 229
Email: m.gilmore@lancaster.ac.uk