Companies and universities have different objectives, but can often work together to their mutual advantage. Kristian Dando finds partnerships between companies and universities which are producing results across Wales.
For many business owners, universities are forbidding institutions to be visited only during the annual recruitment milk round, if at all.
But these academic giants do more than churn out graduates. Aside from their educational and research purposes, universities have what has come to be known as a "third mission" - to engage with the communities which they serve - economically and socially. And that means that businesses can benefit from a analysis and expertise that the private sector can struggle to provide.
At the core of universities' interaction with business are Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) - an initiative funded by the UK government-backed Technology Strategy Board and other groups to spread knowledge and good research habits into enterprise, and to bring business practices into universities. Wales' major universities - from Swansea and Cardiff to Aberystwyth, Bangor and Lampeter - have KTPs in place, able to assist in everything from design and marketing to engineering.
Cardiff Airport is a recent beneficiary from a two-year collaborative project with the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. A first-class honours student from the university, Oliver Jaycock, was asked to examine the business and look for improvements.
Steve Hodgetts, head of business development at Cardiff Airport, oversaw the project.
He says: "One of the things we were looking to do was an extensive piece of research into air travel in South Wales and to attract people to that market," he says. "We wanted to identify the market share we were getting, and the chances of leveraging the business and making inroads to the south west of England - being an alternative to Bristol.
"If we were going to do that with a consultancy, it would have been very expensive. And most consultancies don't hang in for the length of time you need for a project like this."
But although the academic route was cheaper and had the potential to be more thorough, Hodgetts still had a few reservations. "One thing we were sceptical about was whether or not we would get advice from the management school that was rooted in reality," he explains. "But what we got was tangible advice from people who'd been in the front line and knew how business worked. Initially, it did surprise us. Most businesses have scepticism of how academia works. What KTP is very good at is disarming that scepticism."
Jaycock, the graduate who worked on the project, has now been employed full time by the airport as its aviation relations executive, such was the scheme's success.
The airport also put something back into the university. MBA students looked at retail habits and the measurement of service quality as part of their studies, giving them the ability to put a practical use into the theory they were taught. A PhD, an MPhil and three dissertation enrolments have been gained by students at the university as a direct consequence of the project.
"We're going to continue that relationship going forward," says Hodgett. "We worked with the management school and the school of travel and tourism. UWIC put two academic staff into the project and we had a great deal of help. We did survey work, audited airlines, looked at relationships with key stakeholders - learning things about the business that we never knew."
As a result of the work with UWIC, the airport was able to secure eight new services, including flights to Warsaw, Belfast and Jersey. It now claims to be one of the fastest growing regional airports in the UK.
On the other side of the capital, Cardiff University's Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) has a different approach to working with companies. It is a relatively young institution with direct links with the departments of business, city regional planning and law. It advises enterprises from small local firms to giants like Apple and Daimler Benz on environmental, social and economic sustainability - from waste management to work-life balance. For businesses it's a potential source of insight into increasingly important issues.
But BRASS says it won't work with just any business, and won't go to the highest bidder. To gain its support, potential partners must be firmly committed to sustainable practice and be able to provide the centre with insight in return. Mutual benefit is the order of the day and a two-way transfer of information is at the core of any partnership BRASS enters.
"There's got to be something in it for us," says Robert Lee. "Usually the generation of data and so on - but not money. We're not an environmental consultancy - we could set up as one as we've got the expertise. But that's not our reason for doing this. We'd need to be convinced that this is a company committed to sustainability - confident that we're not just showing a company a regulatory shortcut. There's got to be a certain synergy between us."
BRASS has worked with private research bodies in the past and will continue to do so, but frequently it is in direct competition with private research companies and consultancies.
Ken Peattie, BRASS director, says: "We're often going against consultancies, and universities give a depth of research that they often can't match, and to understand issues in depth you need deep analysis. Universities can bring together knowledge from across departments. We cover three departments, but we can call on expertise across the institution."
Perhaps surprisingly, the comparative low cost of enlisting academic services is a factor that can put companies off. Jeroen Dijkshoorn, research associate at BRASS, says: "There's a difference in the financial relationship between research companies and universities - it's not necessarily a good thing, we don't charge massive amounts of money for our advice. But it also might make people wary that they're not getting value."
Liz Thomas, BRASS's communications manager, adds: "BRASS also runs events - not always strictly business focused, but they're free and companies could potentially get a lot out of them. But there's a perception that if it doesn't cost anything, then it's not worth going to. It's a shame."
Firms can also be deterred by a lack of awareness of the services on offer, perhaps because universities lack big marketing budgets.
But while university research has many merits, going to a private company is still a useful option for research. While sometimes coming in at greater expense, the private research companies which compete - and sometimes collaborate - with academic institutions can offer a different, arguably more agile approach.
CRG is a private research company based in Cardiff. Andrew Rix, one of the company's directors and a former member of staff at Cardiff Business School, suggests the private route may provide a speed of response that universities sometimes lack.
"We're quicker and more flexible," says Rix. "Universities have quite a serial way of doing things - we work on a lot of projects at the same time and interlink them. We multitask a lot more than you'd expect of a university and can produce results far quicker."
In North Wales the involvement between academic institutions and business is no less strong. Bangor University's involvement with business was lauded in 2007 at the Knowledge Transfer Partnership awards, with the institution picking up top accolades for its work with Braille developer Vision Support Trading and Lane4 Management respectively.
Even down to undergraduate level, there is some involvement with local business. Bangor's School of Physical and Applied Sciences has strong links with local industry, undertaking consultancy work to assist local firms. Its computer science students usually do their third year projects within industry - frequently finding employment as a result and also undertake a course module called Software Hut, where local companies submit problems or requirements and the students write software to their specifications.
Rob Shepard, facilities manager at the Technium Cast knowledge incubation centre on the outskirts of Bangor, called on the services of undergraduates in 2007. Three teams of students delivered time saving systems and a total of 150 working weeks - at no cost to the business. "The level of sheer professionalism that the students showed was a credit to the university," says Shepard, who will be employing the services of Software Hut again in 2008. "Schemes like this help stop a brain drain from the region - it shows students that there are challenging, rewarding jobs in the immediate area so they think twice about going elsewhere when they graduate."
Around 1,000 KTPs are running at any point in time, with the average annual cost of each project coming to about £360,000. The partnerships were introduced in 2003 to replace the Teaching Company Scheme and are backed by some 17 public bodies led by the Whitehall-funded Technology Strategy Board. Each partnership involves three partners - a company, a knowledge provider such as a university and a recently qualified graduate. The company tends to put up about half of the cost of the project.
Some end up producing new companies. The University of Glamorgan's business school recently completed a KTP with a Cardiff-based homelessness charity called Wallich Clifford Community (now called The Wallich), which aimed to develop alternative income methods for the project.
The KTP project led to a new company called Ikon being set up to create a barrier between the activities of the charity and business to avoid regulatory problems.
It now operates with its own business culture and boasts several subsidiary groups. One of the new companies established is Computers in The Community, a technology recycling business. Its success stands testament to KTPs - although now relatively successful, the business which was taken over to establish the subsidiary was ailing, and academic-derived expertise turned it around.
As well as the the financial benefits achieved by the project, three new jobs have been created and between ten and 20 volunteers at any one time work for the enterprises to gain relevant experience before moving into full-time jobs.
From the University's perspective, the project has led to a number of research activities including publications and has the potential for further such activity.