Aspect members: Cardiff University
What is the project doing?
This project will generate resources, develop toolkits and deliver training and development events and build capacity both within the G4S Custodial and Detention Services. These will be delivered via the G4S Family Intervention Team forum – meetings are held within the G4S Family Support management system on a monthly basis where the managers of the Family Teams across the G4S establishments meet to share best practice across the sites. The students will work with this forum on a consultancy basis to develop resources and toolkits, and deliver training to the other establishments within the G4S network.
Why is this needed?
The project has developed new resources related to how families engage and interact with each other establishing, maintaining and enhancing healthy family ties while a male family member is serving a sentence. The additional expertise brought by the students has developed new and novel approaches to how HMP Parc (and G4S) delivers its family support programme driving organisational innovation and change.
How can members get involved?
For further information, please contact John Parry-Jones (Parry-Jonesj1@Cardiff.ac.uk).
Aspect members: Cardiff University
What is the project doing?
This project is a continuation of the pilot held in 2021, aiming to enable Eleven Fellows to build upon their Cambria Fellowship summer school programme, and to continue their development through networking events, mentoring, and brokering of opportunities with enterprises and organisations within the social economy eco-system to facilitate entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial activity. The funding allows the Fellows to build capacity, business acumen and sustainability by testing their ideas, alongside ongoing support to develop new social enterprise ventures/social science businesses/intrapreneurial activities from Wales Co-operative Centre and Cardiff Business School.
Why is this needed?
The eco-system for entrepreneurship and innovation in Wales is made up of several providers, including Business Wales, Big Ideas Wales, amongst others.
One of the elements missing in this eco-system is a dedicated programme for developing social science scholars’ capacity to commercialise their research interests through social enterprise models, which this programme aims to address.
How can members get involved?
For further information, please contact John Parry-Jones (Parry-Jonesj1@cardiff.ac.uk).
Aspect members: University of Bristol, University of Cardiff, University of Surrey, University of Sussex, University of York, University of Exeter.
What is the project doing?
Most Universities still struggle to provide resources and solve the major challenges of social science commercialisation. The Aspect Translational Impact Acceleration Hub set about solving some of the challenges at the earlier stages of the impact journey by mapping opportunities and testing a new framework to check which activities can seed and accelerate projects along a pipeline.
Why is this needed?
Each University has some capacity. Combining resources and test new things out with a combined pipeline and standardized framework approach will allow us to better target resources and be more efficient in scaling support to academics. In addition, it might allow us the possibility to trial a cohort approach for some of the earlier activities and projects that than could go on a and enter the ARC accelerator.
Aspect member: Cardiff University.
What is the project doing?
Working in collaboration with Sbarc, AHRC IAA, ESRC IAA, Enterprise and Start-Up and Innovation and Engagement teams (who will all be co-located within Sbarc), this project hopes to offer up a 1-3 day Summer of Innovation mini-festival showcasing its most iconic and impressive innovative and commercial projects within the arts, humanities the social sciences. As part of the event, the project also hopes to run a ‘devil’s den’ seed corn funding for small innovative and high-risk commercial projects. This will be awarded via a panel made up of Cardiff University’s community and strategic partners, where projects are reviewed via a 10-15 minute pitch akin to that of ‘dragon’s den’.
Why is this needed?
The primary purpose of this project is to provide opportunities, and ensure recognition, for innovation and commercial activity taking place across the University’s Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences College.
How can members get involved?
The event will be promoted widely throughout the ASPECT network, Welsh universities and via the Cardiff University Innovation Fund Network.
For further information, please contact John Parry-Jones (Parry-Jonesj1@cardiff.ac.uk).
Aspect member: Cardiff University.
What is the project doing?
This project utilises funding as seed funding to commission an external provider to develop a prototype e-learning platform on behalf of Cardiff University. The process of developing the platform will allow the venture to adapt to the challenges and opportunities moving forward through deep analysis of multiple end-user personas. By developing multiple end-user personas as recommended in the market segments identified by a market research report, the venture will be able to better understand the journey unique to each end-user and begin to consider both the online and offline requirements, which are inherently interlinked.
Why is this needed?
Pobl Communications is a train-the-trainers mentoring program that helps its users understand the importance of studying languages and develop appreciation of cultural differences within communities locally and across the globe. A market research report indicated that Pobl Communication would need to be able to deliver their products to their end-users via an online learning platform.
How can members get involved?
Learnings from the project will be disseminated through the Research Commercialisation CoP. A presentation to the group would demonstrate how seed funding can be used to take market research findings forward through a project to package and distribute a product via an online platform in order to pivot towards new market segments.
For further information, please contact John Parry-Jones (Parry-Jonesj1@cardiff.ac.uk).
Aspect member: Cardiff University.
What is the project doing?
The key aims of the project is to develop and collaborate on transformative initiatives that help deliver social value, help the UK to ‘grow back better’ and enable post COVID recovery, address the levelling up agenda and have a positive impact towards social cohesion, inequalities and/or social policy. With the further aim that these deliver scalable projects which can leverage significant external funding, build capacity in the longer term and impact upon regional and national social policies. This proposal will develop resources across three of the four ASPECT thematic areas identified by the ASPECT programme where SHAPE is showing strong potential for applications in real world contexts, namely Economy, the Individual and Social Cohesion.
Why is this needed?
In June 2019, Cardiff University and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) embarked upon a five-year strategic partnership (SP). This partnership appeals to both organisations’ key strategic aims and is centred around five key themes: Economic Intelligence, Regional Impact, Healthy Ageing, Skills and Education and an overarching key, enabling theme of Data Science (for public good).
How can members get involved?
For further information, please contact John Parry-Jones (Parry-Jonesj1@cardiff.ac.uk).
Who was involved in the project?
Royal College of Art & Cranfield University
Susan Postlethwaite s.postlethwaite@mmu.ac.uk; Kat Thiel kat.thiel@rca.ac.uk; Sarah Fletcher s.fletcher@cranfield.ac.uk; Ibetta Eimontaite Iveta.Eimontaite@cranfield.ac.uk;
What was the project doing?
The project was based in Human Factors and design practice research to explore skills levels in garment manufacturing to consider the steps that could be designed out and performed by robots or those needing to remain performed by skilled human makers, importantly identifying requirements for promoting worker satisfaction via new technology and automation, particularly co-botics.
Desk-based research was used to establish the state of the art of the skills levels held by machinists in the UK garment industry and what tools existed to enable analysis of these skills levels, and a limited trial of the eye-tracking analysis to explore cognitive/decision-making activity.
Why was this needed?
The UK’s fashion industry has an international reputation for creative design but it is a field that saw limited impact from new technologies in manufacture. The project began to address the challenges of integrating automation into a highly creative sector with a need for very high levels of agility in production processes.
How could members get involved?
The project team welcomed input from economists and policymakers to inform their understanding of the business case for reshoring UK manufacture. Introductions to engineering/manufacturing sites/research labs and hubs would have been very valuable. They also sought members who were interested in being added to their stakeholder list.
Aspect members: LSE, Partner institution – TBC
What is the project doing?
LSE has developed a business incubator for scalable consultancy hubs (Exchanges) specialising in specific topic areas. The Exchange model is designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial activity through an array of business support resources and services, developed and managed by LSE Consulting.
This project seeks to develop this concept further by extending the model to involve cross-institutional consulting partnerships with universities that offer complementary services to those from LSE.
Mirroring how Universities successfully forge research partnerships and collaborations with each other to develop joint programmes and projects, this project aims to pilot a joint consulting offer with another University for scalable services.
Why is this needed?
Generally, there is little opportunity for joint consulting projects at an institutional level. Individual academics do sometimes participate in some consulting project activity, but it is based on individual project needs. There is little follow up or opportunity to build on existing relationships with clients in a unified approach. There is also a varying degree of support and infrastructure for consulting services in universities, some operating on a more commercial footing while others operate under more of a research framework. This degree of difference makes it difficult to create consulting partnerships as resources are limited and often overstretched.
There is an opportunity to create a joint Consulting Exchange between a Department or Centre at LSE and a Department or Centre with another university. Matching will be based on identifying complementary services between the Departments or Centres so that the focus is on collaboration rather than competition.
How can members get involved?
The project will provide a pathway for universities to collaborate on consulting in a more formal, proactive way. This approach has already been well established with Research but has not yet been developed in consulting. Universities have an opportunity to compete more against private sector consulting companies if they can overcome the biggest challenge of securing sufficient academic interest in the project. Building a multidisciplinary Exchange between two or more institutions addresses the main challenge faced around capacity. For further information please contact: Jeannine McMahon (j.mcmahon@lse.ac.uk) for any further information.
Aspect members: University of Sussex, University of Manchester.
What is the project doing?
MicroSEM for Net Zero project (Micro and Small Enterprise Methods for Net Zero) aims to engage micro and small businesses (up to 49 people staff) to start thinking about implementing changes to their products and services for achieving Net Zero.
The project will build on the guides and tools developed by Methods for Change and work with micro businesses, entrepreneurs, researchers, business associations, knowledge exchange managers, social enterprises and community organisations to identify and develop guides and tools for change specifically targeting 1) micro businesses and entrepreneurs; and 2) Net Zero (locally based decarbonisation).
Why is this needed?
Lack of knowledge, understanding of how evidence-based science applies to their market, skills and resources are among the top things that lead to lack of engagement for micro businesses and entrepreneurs. Micro-businesses and entrepreneurs are also facing the highest costs for energy and have been identified by the energy regulator Ofgem as one of the hardest to engage with the transition to Net Zero.
How can members get involved?
If members are involved in complementary activities (such as working on methods and tools; decarbonisation activities; engagement activities; and/or working with micro businesses and entrepreneurs, or organisations which have direct access to these stakeholders, please get in touch with Franco Gonzalez at fg90@sussex.ac.uk
Aspect member: Zinc.
What is the project doing?
This project is now concluded and piloted a new programme to provide PhD Candidates (mostly 2nd year of their doctorate) with an opportunity to complete a placement within an early-stage venture for three months, full-time. The programme emphasised short-term immersion in the world of early-stage innovation with the aim of helping early career researchers to both teach in and learn from research-related engagement with start-up founders. In addition to their placement, they received training and developed commercial awareness; a transferable skill they can take back to their doctorate.
Why is this needed?
The placements programme is specifically intended to facilitate and amplify both the use of existing social science research in commercial contexts and the opportunities for meaningful collaboration between social scientists and early-stage innovators. The project expects both placement holders and venture hosts to benefit from their collaboration during the placements themselves. Furthermore, it is hoped that some placement holders will be inspired by their experience to work with or for ventures in the future.
How can members get involved?
For any future programmes, Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) across the UK will be contacted with a specific focus on Social Science departments and faculties. Invitations to apply will be distributed via the DTP Programme Manager to PhD Candidates exposing them to the opportunity.
Contact: Dr Sal Malik (salman@zinc.vc) or Rachel Middlemass (rachelm@zinc.vc).
