As Midlands Innovation begins to celebrate a decade of impact, MI Deputy Director, Sue Clayton, reflects on how the partnership has evolved and excelled and shares her thoughts on the potential opportunities for the partnership in the future.
As I prepare to leave Midlands Innovation and the University of Nottingham after 22 years of service, it’s offered me the opportunity to reflect on joining the Midlands Innovation partnership, which this year is celebrating 10 years of collaboration, and how the partnership is just as important now as it was then, perhaps even more so.
I joined Midlands Innovation in 2016, at a point when MI was just a team of three staff and six MI partners. The Brexit referendum had just taken place and the impact that it would have on the sector, in terms of academic research partnerships and student recruitment, was unknown. What was very clear from day one, however, was the considerable support Midlands Innovation had from the Vice-Chancellors. Their ambition to see it succeed and develop into a strong pan-regional partnership was apparent – they wanted us to provide researchers with a platform to collaborate and drive research excellence.
Something that was said to me back in my very first meeting in 2016 would shape how I continue to work to this day, and it still remains a core criteria to the ongoing success of our partnership.
The phase was ‘adding value’ and said by Professor Steve Rothberg. At the time, Steve represented Loughborough University on the MI Executive Management Group of Pro-Vice-Chancellors of Research. He said that Midlands Innovation was formed to add value to its individual partners, so they could collectively deliver research programmes at a scale that one institution alone could not. It’s that consideration of finding the ‘sweet spot’ for our collaboration that continues to this day.
I also use the word collaboration deliberately, it’s another watchword that is central to the output of the MI Team. Looking back to that very first meeting, one thing that also struck me was despite all the big institution-wide projects that I had led and delivered in my career to date, working for a partnership of universities, each with their own aims and aspirations, was going to be fascinating and complex. Bringing colleagues together around a diverse range of disciplines and topics to find the sweet spot of joint interest is only the start of the journey; what follows is a willingness to be flexible, develop an understanding of partner structures and systems and generate trust with the people you’re working with. This all takes time, but is so rewarding when opportunities happen by bringing people together.
Looking back, I can now see that the various roles and opportunities I’ve had throughout my career in the sector up to that point, be that working on international campuses and understanding the impact that geopolitical issues can have on universities and their relationships with stakeholders, or working with undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as managing largescale institution projects and programmes involving multiple teams and faculties, all helped provide a platform for me to be able to excel with MI.
Midlands Innovation was a much different partnership back then. The Energy Research Accelerator had just started, and the Deans of Health and Medicine hadn’t yet established what would become MI Health; the collaborative academic networks that MI now supports and excels with, weren’t developed.
There had only been one Higher Education Technician Summit (HETS) before I joined MI, and I’m delighted that our partner’s continue to nationally champion the role of technicians, with HETS celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and our MI’s technician TALENT Programme – the largest investment in the career advancement of UK higher education and research technicians – will this month (February 2025) come to its successful conclusion. Building on the partner’s commitment to technicians, I worked with partners to develop a statement on academic publishing rights and last year, partners committed to a joint statement on research culture.
One of the achievements I am most personally proud of during my time at MI, is the Midlands Innovation Commercialisation Research Accelerator (MICRA) project. Working with the MI’s Enterprise and Innovation group, we were successful in securing £5m from Research England to fund MICRA. It was an innovative project which brought the Technology Transfer Offices of the eight MI partners together for the first time with the aim of providing a platform to help accelerate the commercialisation of research, which can be a challenge in what is an extremely competitive landscape. Following MICRA’s conclusion partners went on to establish Midlands Mindforge, the country’s first pan-regional university investment vehicle, which aims to attract greater levels of investment into the partner’s academic spin-out portfolio and the wider Midlands I.P. pipeline.
Outside of MI, another project I am extremely proud to have led was devising and introducing the University of Nottingham’s Advantage Award, which still runs to this day. The award is a way of showcasing all of the life and work-based skills students undertake during their time at university so these can be highlighted to future employers when applying for jobs.
As MI celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, it remains a challenging time for the sector, but anyone who has been involved in higher education for a while, will say there have been many challenges before. I know partners really value the platform MI provides for them to discuss with their peers the mutual challenges they face, and it provides a unique support mechanism for academics to look to build collaborative research opportunities through.
The trust that has developed in the partnership over the years is very real and I think MI being a place-based partnership also helps partners to demonstrate their collective impact on the pan-region – be that the highly skilled workers they produce, the supply chains they support, the GVA they deliver directly and indirectly, or the research they collaborate through which supports the region.
Where are the opportunities for MI to grow in the future? There’s so many different areas MI is now involved in compared to when it was first established but the fundamental belief of ‘adding value’ for the partners is still relevant. Just a few thoughts involve collectively supporting our Early Career Researchers; so they can develop and thrive, and continuing with our successful thematic research platforms, such as the MI Space Group. Reflecting on my own MI journey, I’ll miss the many people from the partnership who I’ve worked with over the years, but I look forward to seeing how the partnership delivers over its next ten years.