A former journalist who’d gone to ground in Milton Keynes, I was associated with FutureLearn, the OU’s take on a UK-led effort to imitate the Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) movement blazing fire stateside at the turn of the decade.
“A website that offers free instruction to anybody, anywhere?” I questioned myself. Sounds fantastic. What else is there, I wonder?
I became addicted really quickly after I even scraped the surface. I departed from the OU with great affection, established Global University Venturing, and devoted the ensuing years to discovering innovative university narratives from throughout the world.
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Artificial intelligence and robots, wireless energy transfer technology, hydrogen-powered vehicles, immunotherapies, and regenerative medicine. I would get up every day and find out what the plans for the next day were.
While learning about this universe was and still is incredibly fascinating, I soon started to question, “Why is not anyone else doing this?” Granted, you have regional university innovation trade journals such as the fine Spinouts UK. But in popular tech magazines? nations’ business sections? hardly acknowledged, if at all. From the outside, the entire procedure appeared to be magic.
The explanations for this are easily found when you look into it. Think about how innovation at universities has developed. This industry was founded by scientists and engineers and developed by bankers and businesspeople. There are obviously a lot of advantages to these careers, but a natural knack for narrative is not one of them.
Furthermore, most university innovation offices are overworked and understaffed. Communication is therefore regarded as a nice-to-have rather than a necessary skill. Moreover, narrativeists on both sides of the TTO are scarce. On one side, university press offices that usually aren’t engaged with these stories — if they even understand the university has an innovation arm at all. Conversely, financially struggling spinouts and startups frequently put practically everything else before of hiring a professional storyteller to help them convey their story.
As a result, university innovation communication faces the same conceptual valley of death as our work. After the underlying study is published, there is a steep drop off, with little in the way of resources to assist stories cross this wasteland, and the only rides out of it are extremely expensive.
As a group, we find it simple to dismiss this as not that big of a deal. What is the big deal? University innovation offices continue to license technology, we occasionally launch spinouts, and the different indicators and figures we gather at the end of the year appear to be in line with the previous one. The difficulty is that we can beat folks until we’re blue in the face with our data and metrics, but it is compelling storytelling that makes the difference.
As a sector, our messaging still falls short. My successor at GUV, Thierry Heles, spoke about the invisibility of the tech transfer in a recent editorial on the AUTM 2019 Conference. This was published in a trade magazine for the industry. Research conducted by Oxford University’s news office in 2016 demonstrated that, even with Oxford’s brand recognition, sizeable research funding, and strong success in innovation, numerous groups from general public to MPs still see Oxford as students and humanities — OUI and our many spinouts were barely on anyone’s radar at all.
Human cognition has evolved to prioritize narrative above fact. The scientific method is the sole way that the very idea of a fact—an unquestionable, established truth—has come into being. For this reason, many people continue to view climate change as controversial. The story that “the planet is doomed and it is our fault” is offensive to many, despite the clear and grim facts. Consequently, there will likely be a market for anyone who says, “You are not at blame, your family is secure, the scientists are incorrect, burn all the oil you want.”
In contrast, leveraging narrative as a force for good is what has inspired my three C’s for innovation communication: campus, cluster and country.
One takeaway from a recent Oxford-MIT gathering is that at MIT, the phrase goes that you’re not at MIT until you’ve done a couple of spinouts. This mindset is the result of an innovative culture at the Institute, where more than 90% of staff members collaborate with MIt is innovation division. This kind of culture can only emerge when one’s story is compelling enough to propel it forward. In a similar vein, we may utilize narrative to transform internal view of the TTO away from IP stormtroopers who pester academics who just want to perform research and to facilitators who catalyze research into reality and allow academics to have a big, good impact on society.
This can be accomplished through focused internal communications within an institution, but it is more successful when done in concert with the cluster, leveraging notable entrepreneurial success stories and spinouts as news hooks to promote larger, culture-shifting narratives.
During my time at GUV, one thing I learned is that the more a cluster interacts and collaborates with itself, the stronger that cluster is. The Bay Area’s marketing has made Silicon Valley well-known throughout the world, while Cambridge, Massachusetts has experienced a similar phenomenon.
This distinction between Cambridge and Oxford, UK, is evident. Both have comparable scientific foundations and draw elite people to work in similarly amazing environments. Cambridge is renowned for putting its research to use, despite Oxford receiving more funds for it. The MPs who associate Oxford with the humanities and Harry Potter also acknowledge Cambridge’s contributions to science, technology, and innovation. This is no fluke, but the outcome of a concerted cluster wide effort to explain the entrepreneurial capabilities of Cambridge.
OUI and the Oxford Local Enterprise Partnership are collaborating to form Oxford’s first cluster communications group. The idea is that whether you speak to me, the Vice Chancellor of Oxford Brookes, Williams F1, or a startup on the Harwell campus, we’ll all be saying the same things about Oxford in an effort to generate a rising tide that raises all boats.
Made up of a number of academic institutions, businesses, research centers, and investors, we are developing a common message that highlights Oxford’s innovation excellence, exchanging information, opportunities, and research throughout the network, and putting into practice a much more coordinated and cooperative approach to communication in general throughout the area.
A cluster map is our first undertaking. The cluster map aims to materialize the currently abstract idea of the Oxford tech cluster, drawing inspiration from Oxford’s JRR Tolkien, who created the map of Middle Earth before he started writing its stories. This map, which takes inspiration from related initiatives in both Cambridges, will include a directory of Oxford’s creative citizens as well as an interactive map of everyone present.
Even though the objectives of the various Oxford organizations may differ or even conflict, there is a lot of overlap. Each of us is in need of talent, wants to draw in some sort of funding, and is searching for collaborators. All newcomers to Oxford, whether they are prospective employees of a spinout seeking a community, investors searching for the next big thing, or journalists and legislators seeking a deeper understanding of our work, will have a single, unobstructed view of Oxford thanks to the cluster communications project and the upcoming map.
From my vantage point here at OUI, cluster communications helps us establish ourselves as a key player in promoting innovation in Oxford while enabling us to tell richer, more captivating tales outside of the four walls of our Botley Road headquarters. It presents Oxford to the kind of people we want leading and working in our spinouts. It demonstrates the possibilities that exist for us on a regional and national level. Most importantly for OUI, it raises awareness of our “invisible” initiatives, which strengthens our capacity to promote university ideas and create initiatives like Oxford Sciences Innovation.
The OxCam Innovation Arc—a midway attempt to combine the inventive outputs of both clusters with Milton Keynes—is a topic of significant discussion. However, in order for this to be successful, the outside world must be enthused about the possibility, and that can only happen if the story is as captivating as the data illustrating Oxford’s innovation’s impact. In my view, the UK’s ability to maintain a competitive advantage in the upcoming months and years depends on the success of this project and others similar to it.
But the main purpose of communications is to inspire. The opportunity to access the brightest minds, regardless of their nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or any other characteristic that defines a human being, is a crucial component of creativity that is frequently disregarded. The only requirement is that one must be able to participate.
This is an exciting and wonder-filled industry, and it should be treated as such. Academics who are eager to bring their research to life should be flooding our offices; talent from internet companies and hedge funds should be being taken advantage of; and corporates and investors should be hammering down our door to join us in creating the future.
My goal is to encourage as many others as possible to follow in my footsteps and go down the rabbit hole with us, just like I did all those years ago at the OU. However, it can only occur if we discuss it. If the first wave of university innovation was made up of scientists and engineers, and the second wave was made up of bankers and businesspeople, then the third wave is, in my opinion, creativity and communication. Let us sketch out this region, both literally and figuratively in my instance.
