3. How does it work? The Portal is an online gateway for businesses to post their problems for the Faculty to solve. The Faculty provides the business with a variety of choices for solving their problem, from a simple crowdsourcing exercise to a full Phd project. The Portal provides the Faculty with a database of real-life business problems. It offers both students and staff the opportunity to work collaboratively to engage in business issues on a practical basis and work towards providing a professional yet academically recognised solution. Once a problem has been identified, it is registered on the Portal. The problem is then available for anyone within the Faculty to tackle. This may be on a completely open forum, or within a selective online discussion group. Problems can be taken into class for solving, or even become a dissertation project.
4.
5. What solutions can we offer? Undergraduate coursework assignment Student internships Undergraduate placements Undergraduate in-class activities Undergraduate group projects Individual student final-year dissertation P/grad group projects P/grad in-class activities P/grad individual coursework assignment Masters by research students Masters dissertation PHD student Classic KTP Shorter KTP Commercial project CPD Supervised graduate consultancy Academic consultancy
6. Levels of responsibility Accountable person (e.g. project manager) Responsible person (e.g. delivery person) Programme Manager e.g. for a Masters project… Module Leader Masters student Programme Manager Lecturer Undergraduate students Programme Manager e.g. for an undergraduate in-class group activity
Triton Showers had contacted university with no reply (and had got replies from other universities). The technical director was frustrated that did not get answer. He found it difficult in working out who to contact. Chris Smith had a part-time student at Triton Showers who he visited as he was doing his project and discussed issues more widely. Chris spoke to Technical Director and facilitated some initial information exchange until was able to hand over to Andrew (as needed Faculty-wide perspective). However, this process still took time, as had to identify key people and co-ordinate responses .
ROSPA did not know who to contact or where to start. Chris managed to get name of James Shuttleworth from colleagues. There has been undergraduate and post-graduate activities resulting from this. It has had press coverage on local and regional news.
![What is the Innovation Portal? ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],Problem logged Problem brokered internally Problem solved](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)