An engagement strategy for real-world impact at Cape Peninsula University of Technology

This week, we are joined by Dr. Revel Iyer, Director of Technology Transfer and Industry Linkages at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). He shared insights into CPUT’s innovative 4×4 engagement strategy, which brings together civil society, industry, government, and academia to create real-world impact. Stay tuned and discover how CPUT leverages partnerships, promotes active community engagement, and drives economic growth while fostering a culture of collaboration within and beyond the university.

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Transcript

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
It is my pleasure to welcome Dr. Revel Iyer from Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), who is Director of Technology Transfer and Industry Linkages. We are very much looking forward to hearing about your extensive experience and the strategies that CPUT has employed to enhance external engagement.

Maybe just to start with, can you give us a bit of an overview of your university’s engagement strategy and how this framework came about?

Revel Iyer:
Thanks, Balzhan. We have an overarching 4×4 engagement strategy, which includes civil society, industry, government and academia.

We have created a comprehensive strategy with the goal of CPUT being a member of the community. Not just an institution sitting in bubble, but a real active member of the community.

And to be a real active member of the community, you must be engaging with, a part of and be valued by the community. With that in mind, created the 4×4 Engagement Strategy. It’s a modification of the strategy created by Douglas at al.^[1], and we did that very intentionally with the idea that we are not creating something arbitrarily, but something that we could utilise to measure ourself against other universities worldwide and that will help us learn where we are failing at.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
Was there any particular, bigger motivation behind this? Maybe any changes on policy level or was it the university itself that really wanted to stand out and develop this framework?

Revel Iyer:
I think it’s multiple levels. One of the drivers is that CPUT is a university of technology. By definition, we should be working with the different levels of society whether it’s industry or government.

Then, it’s also embedded within the university’s 2030 vision. Universities typically have a decadal plan, so in our 2020-2030 decadal plan. And to achieve that, we need to be an institution that is engaged and a valued member of the community, and part of that means that we need to be relevant and responsive to the needs of society. The only way you can be relevant and responsive is by engaging with community, understanding what they need, and working with them to create initiatives and knowledge driven outcomes.

At a larger level, if you look at South Africa – I don’t know if it’s a global issue as well – universities are struggling with the current economic situation. In South Africa specifically, in terms of first stream income, universities are seeing a decrease in real terms since around 2010. Universities’ first stream is typically a government subsidy, and the second stream is tuition fees, which we also had to decrease because people couldn’t afford them. So we have seen a hit there, and that is also driving how we position CPUT as a member of the community while also building income streams through that engagement.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
When we talk about technology transfer and strategic partnerships with industry, what kind of role do they play in this bigger framework?

Revel Iyer:
There are a number of different modalities of engagement. I think this is one of the learnings for other institutions out there looking to replicate what we have done: The most important thing is to leverage what you have and what you are good at.

As part of our starting point, we had something called Technology Stations, which are outward facing organs of the university. We have three out of the 18 technology stations in South Africa and two of them service about three to 4,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) every year.

The Technology Stations support industry and SMEs to develop prototypes, new product ranges, etc. It’s not about just doing research, they can come in to utilise our equipment at the effectively small factory that we have.

We also bring our expertise as well, and then we tied that to our research programs, so our research has leveraged that. If big industry wants to come in and they want to outsource their research via contract research, we build programs into that as well.

We have more traditional type of initiatives, like work-integrated learning. We pushed it quite hard at CPUT and beyond the work-integrated learning, we look at service learning where people give back. We also try and bring in volunteerism, where people volunteer beyond their service learning and the world programs volunteer society, because obviously the value that you can provide is beyond the research part, right?

It is participating at different levels of society, informing policy and the way industry grows, and being involved in those industry bodies on the back. Getting people involved that will inform the research and the curriculum as well. Also, the students that come out of the university are getting a better experience and it positions them for the future world of work. So, at multiple levels, we are getting value, the outside communities are getting value, and our students are getting value as well.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
It does sound like the framework integrates many different academic and administrative activities across the university. How do you keep track of all of that? What kind of strategies do you have in place to be able to manage that kind of engagement?

Revel Iyer:
I think it can be quite intimidating if you’re trying to bring all the things together and you have a massive network of activities as well.

The most important point is not to try and micromanage or to change what is working properly.

For example, I mentioned to you, The Tech Stations as an instrument it works very well. Instead of telling them “You need to come out and have a different reporting structure”, we created a structure that seamlessly integrated what was already there without having different layers of bureaucracy.

We have tried very hard to create a central coordination point without creating levels of bureaucracy, so that when you engage with different layers of society, we send the same message instead of having different people interacting at different levels and giving different messages. That was part of the strategy, as well as developing four pillars:

1. Building capacity. You must build capacity with the university, you can’t expect people to do things differently if you don’t upskill them and inform them.
2. Reduction of barriers. Universities are bureaucratic environments, so you need to think how you can reduce those barriers to make sure that the process is streamlined and there isn’t a pain point from the external and internal points of view.
3. Communication. Having a central coordination of that communication without building different layers of reporting. Making sure that communication is transparent, clear, and that we also listen. This is something that people often forget: Communication is not just about talking, but also listening, and we want to listen to society.
4. Action-oriented conversations. When you engage, make sure you build on that. Also, if you want to create this web of activities, it’s not going to happen in one day. You have to build slowly, add on programs over a period of time. In some instances you will fail, but learn what you did wrong, be reflective and grow from there.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
How big is CPUT and how many people and what do you have in place to orchestrate that system? Because it is very comprehensive and quite well integrated the way you described it.

Revel Iyer:
We are quite a big institution. We have roughly 35,000 students and a large staff complement as well. To communicate this to all the individuals is a long-drawn process, so we have to utilise different modalities of communication. We will have workshops, videos, structured programs with the Staff Development Academy, which is a structured outlet for all capacity development initiatives. It has been a slow process and we have built it at different levels, but also this will be a learning process and we want to engage.

It’s not like we are creating a design pack and saying “This is how you will do it”. We learn from the staff, the students and the external environment, and reflect. It is not a rigid structure and we learn as we go and are willing to change policies and standard operating procedures.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
And all those interventions that you have in place will help build the culture over time. Now, speaking of faculty and academic engagement, what is the status of it? Do you see that most of the academics are engaged or you, there is a long way to go?

I know it’s the million-dollar question because many institutions are always asking themselves how to do it properly, but maybe you can share some lessons with us.

Revel Iyer:
I think you’ve struck the nail on the head: It is about culture, right? You are driving a change in culture, so it is about change management. You need to understand what drives people because, at the end of the day, it is about people, and you need to speak to them and what you are doing needs to provide value to them.

It is all about how we provide value to the individuals at a personal level and within the university system.

One of the most important things within the university system, we have the ad hominem promotion system, where you start off as a junior lecturer and you move all the way to a professor. At CPUT we have successfully built the recognition of external engagement into our promotion structure. So, when we look at our academics in terms of what they have achieved at the university, one of the categories is the engagement with industry, the amount of contract research you have done, the amount of entrepreneurship you have been involved in, and the level of involvement in innovation.

Beyond that, in South Africa, in terms of the legislation of our innovation and technology transfer system, we a built-in, benefit-sharing mechanism: If you are involved in innovation collaboration, you share the proceeds of that licensing activity once it’s successfully commercialised. Beyond that, in terms of our contract research, for example, and third-stream activities, a portion of potential profit is then paid out to those people who are involved in those activities.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
How do the incentives work in practice and are academics all aware of that? I guess this is where we go back to that communication bit that you’ve been talking about that it’s also very important to raise that awareness.

Revel Iyer:
I had that conversation recently and it came across that not everyone is aware of these benefits and incentives, so you are quite correct. We have different modalities of engagement as well, and you could be speaking at a senior management level, and you find it doesn’t trickle down to the people working on the ground. You must consciously build those communication modalities into your strategy.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
I would like now to talk about your partners, because you have already mentioned industry, we talked a little bit about SMEs. Can you describe the profile of all different kinds of partners that you would usually work with? Do you distinguish between strategic partners versus regular partners?

Revel Iyer:
In a 4×4 engagement strategy we have the four layers, so we differentiate between industry, civil society, government, and academia. But even within the industry component, we will then differentiate between SMMEs and big industry.

It is an important part of the South African cultural space. You need to look at your specific context and recognise different types of levels within your system. When we look at it, we don’t just look at the sector, we look at the value we provide to the ordinary South African.

We might be engaging through any initiative with government, but we look at who are the final beneficiaries as well. The key point, and this is where I stand in driving different programs at the university, I want to see value for the ordinary South African regardless of who I partner with.

And the way we measure it is to ask: Do we improve the quality of life of South Africans? Do we create new jobs? Do we grow the South African economy? And the reason I push this quite hard is because if we do this and we do this well, we will also make money for the university.

Many other universities have money as their primary driver. If you push money as your primary driver, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will also bring value to the ordinary person in terms of improving the quality of life, growing the economy, etc.

If you focus on bringing value to the ordinary person, and you do it well, you will also bring economic value to your institution.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
What you are saying is very important, but I always wonder how do you manage to measure that impact and benefit for society?

Revel Iyer:
As I mentioned in the beginning, we are following the system created by Douglas et al., which has certain criteria that allows us to be included in their framework when they create the global. metrics in terms of where the university is standing with regards to engagement.

Just to point out on a high level the criteria that they use, there are eight main points:

1. University commitment to engagement. Looking specifically at the senior and executive buy-in to the engagement strategy.
2. Community’s opinion of the university. How do the external parties see the contributions of the university in terms of the value?
3. Student access. And I’m talking about pre-university student, at the school level. Do they have access to university? Can they see what our university is about? Do the programs that we offer actually upskill the students, even if they are in rural or disadvantaged context? Do they have access to what we offer?
4. Volunteerism. How well do we volunteer? Not just at the student level, but at the staff level.
5. Research reach outside of journal articles. Do we produce innovations that are transferred to industry? Do we inform policy? Do we participate in industry panels?
6. Community-engaged learning. Does society inform our curriculum? We want to create a student population that is set up to be the next generation of employees and employers. So it helps if your curriculum is informed by society.
7. Socially responsive purchasing.
8. Carbon footprint.

The report from Douglas et al. is informing us and helping us understand what the broader context is. Beyond that, we also look at the drivers of the ordinary South African and our context.

I will give you one example: In South Africa, as well as in many other countries in Southern Africa, as young men come of age, they go through a traditional circumcision that has a high mortality rate. At CPUT we developed a technology that helped decrease that mortality rate, which was then transferred to a small company who rolled out in 30,000 units in one year. That was transferred to these young individuals going through the rite of passage and, even when the university hasn’t received any money from it, I can be proud to say it impacted people’s lives, decreasing the mortality rate.

Those are the factors that I look at. We don’t focus so much on how much money came in. It is still an important factor funding allows you to build other instruments in the university, but it is not the driving point for us. We also don’t look at the number of patents, but the transferability of that.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
I’m very impressed by this people-driven approach that you are taking, it is admirable. Now, being mindful of time, I would like to get to the bigger and forward-looking questions.

What have been the biggest challenges in implementing and sustaining this very comprehensive framework? Do you have any lessons that you would like to share?

Revel Iyer:
It is going to be a learning process. Take it slowly, one step at a time, learn through that and learn from the times you don’t success. Don’t look at it as a failure, but as a window to improve.

Within the university space, you are quite constrained in terms of resources, whether it is money or human personnel. Leverage what is out there. We looked at what government offered in terms of instruments, and we started building relationships from there. For example, we have the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition in South Africa, so we looked at what instruments they had for building partnerships between industry and universities. That way, without the university having to throw so many resources, we built that relationship, and we leveraged those instruments. Their networks helped us build more partnerships as well.

Build on what you are good at as an institution, leverage what is out there, look at your context and build on the failures.

Balzhan Orazbayeva:
Thank you so much. That brings us to the end of this conversation. And I would like to thank all the listeners today and you, Revel, for sharing your lessons learned.

Just to remind everyone, this event was part of our free Fireside Chat series. If you found this one interesting, which I personally did, make sure to visit our events page to see what’s on. We run lots of different kinds of events on university-industry interaction and innovative universities. Revel, it was a great pleasure to learn more about this framework and I hope to see you soon.

Revel Iyer:
Thanks, Balzhan.

References

^[1] Douglas, D. R. B., Grant, J., Wells, J. (2020). Advancing University Engagement: University engagement and global league tables. Nous Group. https://nousgroup.com/assets/docs/Engagement-Report-Digital.pdf

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