The UIIN Business Group | Collaboratively addressing common challenges to enhance university engagement

Our latest issue of the University Industry Innovation Magazine | Strategic Partnerships with Industry showcases global initiatives and models that highlight the importance and power of universities, businesses, government, and society working together. One of UIIN’s own initiatives, the UIIN Business Group, showcases how businesses can successfully join forces to strengthen their engagement with universities.

Whilst the pandemic caused significant and rapid transformations in higher education, forcing institutions to intensify external relations and strategic partnerships, these disruptions also demanded quick adaptability from professionals collaborating with the higher education sector from the industry side. As an initiative to support those business professionals working across university engagement, joint R&D and talent acquisition, the UIIN Business Group was established early 2020, as a platform to share experiences and knowledge to collaboratively address common challenges that companies may have related to university engagement.

The role of University Relations officer is a fairly new one within companies. I very much value the sharing of knowledge with colleagues in a similar role, which enables me to professionalize the function further and be inspired”.

The UIIN Business Group brings together professionals from innovation-intensive large and medium-sized companies operating in diverse industries, currently representing companies such as ASML, CSL, Novartis, Salesforce, Siemens and Zeiss. Through exclusive Business Group-focused, facilitated events of different formats, including thematic roundtable discussions, workshops, fireside chats and panel discussions featuring guest speakers from both companies and universities, various pressing topics and practical issues are being tackled within an intimate and trusted environment.

The group therefore functions as a vehicle to verbalise opinions and share practices, as well as to create and exchange knowledge. This knowledge is spread not only by company representatives at the UIIN events, but also through the creation of good practice cases on university-business collaboration, with a specific focus on the company perspective to engagement. Moreover, the UIIN community, comprising a strong network of universities located across the globe, offers opportunities for companies and universities to directly interact and collaboratively address common issues to enhance university-industry engagement.

The UIIN Business Group is a truly unique opportunity to engage with peers from innovation-focused organisations across different industries. Although we may be working in very different areas, it’s fascinating to see how similar our experiences are, the value we see in academic partnerships, and the challenges we face. The exchange of ideas, tools and resources has allowed us to seed new ideas and approaches within our own team”.

UIIN Business Group members are organisational members of UIIN, which means that in addition to the exclusive Business Group benefits, they also have access to UIIN membership benefits. UIIN Business Group is currently open to new business professionals operating across different areas and disciplines in university-industry engagement. For more information about the UIIN Business Group and opportunities to attend or speak at a Business Group Meeting, visit our website or get in contact with Dr. Balzhan Orazbayeva via email.  

For more information and to get your copy of the University Industry Innovation Magazine, visit the UIIN store. UIIN members can access the magazine for free in their Members Area.

University Industry Innovation Magazine | Strategic Partnerships with Industry

Header photo: Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash