It is with great pleasure that I write as your new Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law. I was intringued with the title of the seminar today at Thorpe Park attended by other Deans from Business Schools and members of the Business Community.
The title was “What Can Education Do for Business?” and my immediate reaction was that we should be partners and find ways of winning together; precisely how the first speaker started his oration. Thereafter I found myself encouraged at the willingness of members from education and business discussing how they could benefit from working together and various case studies were mentioned on both good and suboptimal performances.
The importance of having good processes to assess viability, market acceptance and risk returns were all considered as was the need for cross-fertilisation of ideas and the importance of serendipity, chance and an “innovation eco-system”.
Similar to other alliances and negotiations the importance of understanding motivations, values and aligning them was discussed as was the discipline of execution; commercial targets and challenges were considered an important source of new research questions and articles. As a vocational University with close links to the business community and a growing reputation for research excellence the opportunity is there and we now need to “Make it happen”.
Martin Allison
Dean of the Faculty of Business & Law
