UPBEAT - an example of how to use it

Extract from Powell, J. and  Ozorhon, B. for The Future of Higher Education – Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference (FOHE-BPRC) Conference 17-19^th October 2011, Bucharest, Romania (to be published by Springer and Verlag 2012)

Abstract

This paper concerns universities’ growing attempts to reach-out meaningfully to strategic external partners, often in an attempt to marshal new resources from a pluralism of sources, and thus enabling innovative university-business collaborations to flourish, creating wealth for all. It extends the conventional notions of the Bologna Process towards a European Higher Education Area that engages business and the community in creative ways with respect to their learning, especially with partners who have found it so difficult to engage with Higher Education in the past. Such engagement requires academics themselves to become more entrepreneurial in the way they reach out to new partners who are quite different from their traditional students. While there are many academics who would prefer to work in the universities' traditional ways of teaching and research, and not have to consider these very different kinds of new learners or develop outreach projects, there are is an increasing number with trans-disciplinary skills and aptitudes, both able and willing to collaborate on projects which create high value improvements and impact in the real world and for local people.

Our research shows senior academic leaders must recognise those of their staff with a real passion for such co-creative working, provide them with the support and coaching to ensure they can engage more innovatively with strategic external partners and reward them when they achieve success enabling universities to become the leaders of new opportunities in the global knowledge economy; for while they are typically self motivated they too, like everyone, welcome recognition and reward for successful effort. It is only if senior university leaders recognise the importance of complementary ways of working that European Universities will properly diversify their approaches to deliver wealth creating solutions demanded by business and the community and thus develop new and relevant income streams for themselves so essential for their future growth, and those of their partners. Governments in their turn must also support those universities to reach out to business and the community in constructive ways. In particular, we show an approach, known as UPBEAT, which has been developed, as a questioning framework, to support improved academic and industry engagement and to help all acquire the funding to make such developments possible. It provides a simple, coherent and intuitive approach - a driver - to focus academics towards successful ways of engaging with a business, and industry, civil and voluntary services or social settings for the benefit of all. The UPBEAT approach and its framework was developed through the detailed analysis of nearly 200 case studies that identified different elements of successful engagement of creative universities working with their creative city regions.

The aim of the approach is to turn traditional academics into entrepreneurial ones by giving them a self-evaluatory framework to drive more relevant and innovative academic engagement with a broad range of end user partners. A fourfold of working processes are required in order to effectively manage what we have come to call Academic Enterprise development, thus ensuring socially inclusive wealth creation, which develops: solution enabling skills; new forms of business acumen; intelligent partnering; and appropriate academic talent. The paper goes on to describe the process in more detail, highlights how academics must themselves learn how to acquire funds from a pluralism of resources, and finally analyses the success of the approach through the lens of innovation theory; we also identify how different perspectives of innovation can underpin our understanding of how such a model supports the “stage management” of leading edge ideas in to the real world. Relevant to this financial section of the overall debate, it requires academics to understand how to develop solutions to real word problems reflecting user DEMANDS by society, as well as their needs. And it heralds an academic approach reflecting Bologna principles, where key aspects of Higher Education must lead to: the co-identification of worthy Academic Enterprise problems; the co-design of solutions demanded by society reflecting the highest academic values; the co-production of new products and processes fit-for-purpose in order to create real and sustainable impact; and continuous improvement through formative evaluation. It is an approach that the PASCAL International Observatory for place management, social capital and learning regions believe will lead to a new breed of ‘Universities for a Modern Renaissance’.

The Fourfold of Enterprise Skills

UPBEAT’s matrix shows the two dimensions of the UPBEAT evaluator matrix before they are filled in
by an Academic Enterprise leader or an external evaluator-coach.

The UPBEAT framework considers four main enterprise success factor areas. Solution Enabling addresses the issues of ideas, need, creativity and solutions. Individual Talent addresses concepts of leadership, motivation, skills and capabilities. Intelligent Partnering looks at team development, networks and the governance and operational principles that make these relationships work. New Business Acumen focuses on making the ideas applicable in the real world, considering not only the “product”, but also the mechanisms by which the product is delivered to the end user and the resources and processes which are marshaled to ensure that the idea is effectively delivered. Each of these skills can be linked to different aspects of innovation. Table 1 below shows the broad definitions for UPBEAT.

Developing the Skills in some detail to ensure the Successful completion of any Academic Enterprise

In this section we explore the detail of each of this fourfold of academic enterprise skills, why they are important in the context of this conference and, in particular to the financial aspects of developing sustainable university Academic Enterprise enabling ‘financially sustainable universities. One of the key aspects of this is for the developing entrepreneurial academics to become ‘street wise’ about how they acquire the funding to undertake such work, which is quite different from their other modes of teaching/learning and research funding. They must therefore learn to work in close collaboration with their external partners to acquire the funding necessary to truly identify demanded solutions, co-design sustainable solutions and co-produce worthwhile new products and processes

New Business Acumen: New Business Acumen is a skill developed by Academics which gives them sufficient understanding of business (enterprise) language - including social entrepreneurship - to ensure success when working with external partners. For probably the first time in their lives, when they work in this way with business and the community, they must co-identify problems that both they and their partners consider worthy of exploration and development; they must learn how to co-create and co-design acceptable solutions; and then actually work to co-produce appropriate end product and processes. So, at the basic level of engagement with their business or social enterprise partners, they must begin to become both market and business aware and demand driven.

Universities are indeed becoming more diversified in the ways they seek funding (Estermann and Pruvot, 2011), but only a few have embraced the pluralism of available financial sources to ensure financial sustainability, developed the funding teams required to access a wider range of funding and developed university governance procedures to make new funding streams easily accessible. In a parallel study on Academic Enterprise leadership by Powell and Clark (2012) most academic leaders, by and large, stressed financial difficulties in working in this arena; this is mainly caused by a lack of readily available funding to pursue Outreach, as a real barrier to progress.  Furthermore, as one academic said to us ‘the limited financial rewards made available internally in Universities were often insufficient to promote a greater uptake in Academic Enterprise’.  However, the best leaders we met indicated their own success as resulting from their ability to find money, where others have not necessarily thought to look: ‘finding the resources to make the enterprise work just became one of the challenges, but increasingly a very important one’; ‘leaders take on the pain and marshal the resources to actually get to our required destination’.

Successful leaders of such new ways of working see funding as just another challenge, and not a barrier to progress, and many have worked with senior colleagues earlier in their careers to develop the skills necessary to acquire continuous funding. It is therefore important for universities to coach junior Academic Enterprise leaders in the processes of funding acquisition to enable their successful future developments as the aforementioned paper also indicated universities need to create governance structure and funding teams able to work toward gaining funds from a rich panoply of sources – those with the new academic business acumen leave ‘no stone unturned’ or potential funders asked, each with their own nuances of being approached and considered. The ones we have now approached are: private sponsors; businesses and industries as independent entities; business and industry clubs; Chambes of Commerce; Social Enterprise funders;  Regional Development Agencies, Business Enterprise Agencies, the European Commission and its many parts, the Research Councils, philanthropic organisation, the civil and voluntary serves, banks and even communities and groups of citizens themselves. Much of this effort is now focused on co-funding and matched funding, but for those who follow the UPBEAT approach, they have a real advantage in that they have willing and able partners to develop such funding arrangement. None of this work is ‘rocket science’ but it does require academics to engage in quite a different way with potential funders, for universities to coach them in how to do it and for fast acting management process to be set up in the university to handle funding and the deliverables that relate to it.

So New Business Acumen is concerned with the practical issues of addressing the demand side of the equation. Need as we have said many times throughout this paper, is differentiated from demand within the model. Need is driven by an understanding of the problem domain which may generate a number of contingent responses. Demand is concerned with addressing need in such a way that the solution might be adopted.  This can be viewed as requiring and range of philosophical stances and practical actions. The meeting of demand requires the development of effective processes such as supply issues, management, invoicing, and marketing, for example. The academic team needs to be able to marshal the appropriate resources and apply them effectively if it is going to genuinely innovate (Edwards et al., 2004). This does not necessarily mean the academic team does these things themselves, but they must have appropriate partners or support to ensure these actions are undertaken.

It is not sufficient for enterprising academics to know how to express better what their external partners need to know and how to get into a deeper, meaningful and maturing conversation with them.  They also need to get a demand side view of any problem, or potential solution, when developing any Academic Enterprise.  This capability also considers how teams manage the practicalities of engaging with end user groups. In short, these include the themes of demand, measurement and understanding of impact, marshalling resources and management issues. We have provided an extended discussion of this Enterprise Skill development because it is central to the discussion in this part of the conference and because without financial sustainability no Academic Enterprise stands any chance of flourishing.

Solution Enabling: While any Academic Enterprise development depends upon someone recognizing a real need and its real demand, there is the complementary skill of turning an innovative idea into an implementation of real impact. Solution Enabling is the skill of repositioning imaginative research concepts into a successful working reality; this requires taking research and translating it into foresight that enables a team to undertake the work necessary to form a successful and sustainable solution. It is made up of two main sub-skills within the skill; the recognition of the problem and the capacity to identify workable solutions to those problems.

At the core of any innovation is an idea. It is driven by a number of antecedents (Lesseure 2004) in a particular context which drive a need for an innovative that identify a specific need. These may be enormously variable depending on the approach. Academic engagements, such as Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, may have very specific drivers that affect a specific organisation, but equally, they may be driven by antecedents that are sector specific, national or global issues. This considers the ability of the group to understand, engage with and potentially change the knowledge base that may drive specific innovations. This also requires a capacity to link with knowledge and define a solution within that space (Roper et al 2008).

Another consideration is the nature of the innovation itself. As we define it, it must ideally be a boundary object, but as such it is the meaning attributed to it by the end user group that is critical. The developed solution must fulfill one of the definitions of an innovation, to improve things, or create value, for that end user (Edwards et al., 2004). We have discussed how the processes of co-creation and co-production can help an academic team create something with end users to create the boundary object, again showing the effective linkages between the quadrants. The innovation must be able to fit within the real world context, not only understanding the needs of the end users, but also recognising that a specific innovation may link with or compete against other innovations and their supporting infrastructures (Afuah and Bahram, 1995); ideas that meet a need can fail because they do not effectively understand the context of the demand.

Table 1: UPBEAT Descriptions for Sub-Skills

Individual Talent: The key aspect of the skill of Individual talent is self development with a view to becoming ‘best in practice’ in your discipline and developing the confidence of your knowledge and ‘know-how’ to work effectively in trans-disciplinary teams whose complementary talent is also ‘top-notch’ – so key in this skill development is awareness of own talent and capability, honing it to the highest level, being coached to reveal your best and then coaching others to success. It is concerned with the issues connected to individuals within the team. This includes leaders and core team members both within and outside the Academic context. The key themes within this skill are leadership, skills and capabilities, coaching and learning and motivation.

Key in developing this talent is leadership. In our context, leadership is defined as “defining the reality of others” (Smircich and Morgan, 1982) especially in terms of a purposeful and innovative vision, and must be linked clearly to the development of a creative context of a team as identified under the Partnering skill. The role of leadership was clearly identified through the case studies as being a core critical success factor. While there are a number of different approaches to innovation that may require different leadership approaches (Dechamps, 2005), such as varying levels of control and deferring of authority (Krause, 2003; Jung, 2003), the requirement of some form of leadership to drive innovation is considered as vital to the UPBEAT model. Leadership is not just in the hands of one person – so called ‘hero leaders’ – it should be shared across the creative enterprise team with different members taking the lead at different times.

The coaching and learning role of leadership was seen as a key component if the effective development of teams within the UPBEAT framework. Leadership is seen as an essential component of driving a culture of mutual coaching between individuals (Hargreaves and Dawe 1990), but it is about how an individual connects with others. While individual talent considers the development of an individual’s skills, the issues of coaching and learning can be seen to expand into issues of the wider effectiveness of the team (Showers and Joyce, 1996; Powell and Clark, 2012).

The ability of leaders to motivate is also important in driving teams to innovate (Jung 2003; Jackson, 2012). However, there are both intrinsic and extrinsic factors which may drive individuals towards or from innovation (Amabile, 1999). For the academic context these may be career progression, desire to make a difference or monetary rewards. The UPBEAT model proposes that we make these as explicit as possible and understand that they need to be addressed for effective engagement. It also has implications for the wider University in terms of the supporting structures it puts in place to enable innovation (Jung, 2003).

Existing competences and capabilities shape the ability of a group to respond to a problem and successfully innovate (Leonard Barton, 1995; Amabile, 1999). A competence is defined as a proven skill set which is evidenced by activity. A capability is an underlying capacity to develop a competence. In defining the skills required the UPBEAT team must recognise not only the skills have and potential skills that they may grow, they must also recognise where there is neither competence nor capability required to deliver the innovation.

Intelligent Partnering: This Partnering skill is where teams utilise joint strengths to energise enhanced change with systemic outreach and continuing improvement - recognises that problems and challenges are now so complex that individuals cannot longer solve them and that academics need to be intelligent in their development of networks of partners for tackling different projects and become more sensitive to the social needs of such partnerships. It is concerned with how the individuals work together as a team. Within this skill are the themes of team work, networks, modes of communication and co-identification, creation and production of innovations.

Partnering is concerned with co-operative behaviour, ranging from specific issues of projects teams, to wider engagement in networks and communities of practice (Storck and Hill, 2000). The UPBEAT model addresses a range of questions within this context. The first is to address the explicit shared space between the participating group members. This is of particular relevance when considering the issues of academic and external engagement. Developing a shared meaning (Nonaka and Konno, 1998; Swan, 2000) is often seen as a key factor in sharing and developing ideas and this can often be complex between academia and external parties (Gann, 2001). UPBEAT teams need to consider how they engage, such as through the development of boundary spanner skills (Aldrich and Herker, 1977). This is essential if genuine co-production (Jasenoff, 2004) or co-creation (REF) is to take place. Co-production/ creation could be considered an essential component of the developing of outcomes which may have meaning in both the academic and end user worlds; a boundary object that has meaning in both academia and to end users (Star and Greisemer, 1989) as innovation outcome.

Partnering also addresses issues such as team building and the various roles and responsibilities of team members.  The model asks questions to make some of these issues explicit, with team identifying relevant functions and actions and effectively linking them back to the identified skill sets. This looks at the close relationships of what might be defined a core project team which would include key stakeholders from both within and outside the University.

At the broader level Partnering considers the networks which the group may be involved in. As noted previously, these networks and communities of practice help in both the determination of the problem space, under the Solution Enabling Quadrant, and provide diffusion networks for any innovation (Larsen and Ballal, 2004). Effective linking into networks can clearly drive both of these success factors for the innovation. This also links into Chesborough’s concept of Open Innovation (2003) where the academic team would be a partner in a wider innovation process, rather than the locus.

It is important to understand the linkages between the 4 skills and the way they must be developed in parallel for a successful Academic Enteerprise. The model defines a balance between the skills required for successful activity. Looking at the ability to both scan relevant issues and define solutions within the Solution Enabling Quadrant, we can see that there is a requirement for domain specific knowledge for internal idea generation (Hansen and Birkenshaw, 2007; Amabile, 1999), but, as we said earlier, this has to be done while differentiating between the need for any solution and whether it will then either be demanded or a demand developed.  In the UPBEAT model it is recognized that Individual Talent has to be recruited and coached to cope with the systemic nature of any problem. Then the interdisciplinary group chosen to undertake any project has become a creative team through Intelligent Partnering. Additionally, as a project grows in stature, the importance of networks (Owen-Smith and Powell, 2004), or communities of practice (Strock and Hill, 2000), become important to the richer generation and wider diffusion (Larsen and Ballal, 2005) of knowledge. The 4 skills are inherently linked and success in one is co-dependent on development of the others.

Qualities and Levels of Engagement – the Drive for Innovation

The previous section highlights the four essential skills an academic has to develop in order to turn his traditional skills into ‘enterprising’ ones. In this respect, as the academics strive for continuous improvement in these skills and processes taken individually and collectively they should strive to improve the “Qualities and Levels’ of their engagement with their enterprise development team partners, their client, and end users, etc. For any new project they need to start by recognising how, and with whom, they need to engage in order to initiate a sound, yet innovative, enterprise development. They then need to start building necessary capacity to properly undertake the projects from a broad range of perspectives. At a higher engagement they need to improve their creative team’s development as they come to handle their project more competently. Once a team is competent, it should then strive to sufficient mastery of its roles that they can properly negotiate an overall solution from a position of strength, where each team members knows when to ‘give and take’ for the benefit of the overall team performance.

At the higher engagement levels the Academic Enterprise development is clearly beginning to work really well, and this is where the creative team, or at least some of its members, are seen to become creative leaders in their own right. Such leaders often extend the scope of any existing project, spin off new sub projects or perhaps even start completely new projects.  At the top level of engagement the team, or some of its leaders, starts to act as stewards in a global context, having respect from almost anyone as they become world authorities of their chosen enterprise topic or agenda. Within UPBEAT, the skills are expressed in terms of capability levels showing high levels or qualities of professional engagement. It is recognised that a group is not either innovative or not, but can show varying levels of skill. As the team improves, it is also recognised that real impacts begin to get greater and greater.