Collaboration to SPARK innovation

Professor Rick Delbridge recently addressed Cardiff Business School’s Executive Education Breakfast Briefing on 14 July 2016.

Professor Delbridge, Cardiff University’s Dean of Research, Innovation & Enterprise, introduced the audience of academics, business leaders and members of the creative industries, to the University’s Innovation System.

The Innovation System, which forms part of the The Way Forward, is a systematic and sustained approach to developing and enhancing the University’s physical infrastructure. This development will help foster high-quality collaborations and partnerships with business, government organisations and the third sector while delivering benefits which spill over into the wider society and economy.

A key element of the Innovation System has been the development of the £300M Cardiff Innovation Campus. The Hadyn Ellis Building and the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) have already opened with two further buildings scheduled for 2018 - Innovation Central and the Translational Research Facility for Catalysis and Semiconductors.

The Social Science Research Park will be integral to the Innovation Central development and will co-locate researchers with key stakeholders. The ambition for SPARK is to generate economic, social and environmental value through developing new solutions to societal problems founded on collaboration and co-development across sectors, disciplines, regions and nations.

Dr Nick Bourne, Cardiff University’s Head of Commercial Development, joined Professor Delbridge and expanded on the research and planning work behind the Innovation Campus development, articulating how the new buildings will work and the international models that have inspired them.

The exciting plans were received enthusiastically by the audience and lively discussion took place on the impact and benefit to the local community, from a social and economic perspective.

The next Breakfast Briefing event will be held in September 2016.