Meeting minds

This blog post was published on January 14, 2013 at 10:27 am GMT

But the wider picture is that universities and business still struggle to understand one another. Research reported a few months ago on the Guardian website reveals that industry and academe are keen on the benefits of working together, but have difficulty speaking each other’s language. Both sides are wary of disagreements, diverging priorities and different timescales. Employers have problems which universities could solve, but many suspect academics of being out of touch with business reality. Academics, on the other hand, are committed to rigorous research with lasting impact. It doesn’t happen overnight.  Many potentially great collaborations go unexplored simply because neither side knows quite who to talk to in order to get things moving. 

The Guardian report comes up with a number of suggestions on how to get people talking, from the equivalent of speed-dating sessions to something called a sandpit, in which participants can ‘play’ together in a non-threatening environment. There’s obviously a lot of scope for innovation in how to broker relationships. 

It’s not apparent if anyone mentioned breakfast in the report, but over the last year or two it’s proved a great forum for sharing practical insights from OU research, and building links with business locally nationally and — via the web — internationally through the Business Network. Meanwhile the recently launched OU Business Perspectives programme is gathering pace as a way of fostering dialogue between researchers and managers. The OU is open for lots of things, including business. What else should we be doing to promote the meeting of minds?