Read: The transformation of place through partnership - how Durham University is bringing opportunity to the North East
The best place-based organisations forge strategic partnerships that drive economic growth in their local areas. Universities are playing an increasingly important part of that coalition of the willing, collaborating with other local bodies to deliver opportunity.
That is particularly true of the North East of England, a region where there have traditionally been few opportunities. Purpose Coalition partner, Durham University, has a keen focus on the role it plays not only in the historic home city of Durham but also on its wider role in the North East. It is using its expertise - its world-leading research capability - to improve people’s lives, with its ten research institutes bringing together staff and external partners to make a positive contribution to the challenges that the world faces today.
As part of that work, Durham University is leading the Northern Accelerator partnership, a collaboration with the Universities of Newcastle, Northumbria, Teesside, Sunderland and York. It was set up in 2016 to increase the rate at which universities in the North East translate their research findings into successful commercial products and services that will make a social and economic impact. It aims to build a pool of entrepreneurial talent that will take forward commercial opportunities and helps to progress ideas to commercialistaion through stronger tech transfer teams. It has developed a programme of support to exploit intellectual property and scale-up activity, targeting gaps in the innovation support landscape and is developing new funding routes for spinouts, including a dedicated venture capital fund, Venture North.
Northern Accelerator has been hugely successful. It has transformed the university innovation ecosystem, creating 47 businesses in a range of sectors which offer high-value jobs, many based in the North East and North Yorkshire, including innovation clusters at Durham’s North East Technology Park (NETPark). In the last five years spinouts from its partner universities have raised over £100m investment. It has also delivered over £123m additional GVA (Gross Value Added) to the region’s economy over a 10-year period. That’s estimated to rise to £140m by 2030.
Northern Accelerator is delivered by the Innovating Together – Universities in the North East (In-TUNE) partnership, launched by Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria and Sunderland Universities to deliver two business support programmes aimed at strengthening the North East economy. The universities work with technology innovation catalyst, CPI, which brings together academia, businesses, government and investors to deliver great ideas into the marketplace with the right experts, equipment, networks and funding.
Alongside Northern Accelerator, the In-TUNE partnership also supports Arrow, a business support programme which focuses on helping regional SMEs to innovate by connecting them with university expertise. The programme is expanding across the region and organisations in County Durham and North of Tyne Combined Authority areas can access innovation support from all four North East universities to develop new products and processes.
The value of the regional collaboration has been recognised by the North of Tyne Combined Authority and Durham County Council which awarded £2.79m Shared Prosperity Funding to continue developing the Northern Accelerator model at Durham, Newcastle and Northumbria Universities as part of the In-TUNE project. Research England also announced an additional £1.5m Connecting Capability Funding for the full six-university partnership to pilot new activity alongside its current work, trialling new interventions and additional support programmes.
Rooted in its community, Durham University’s purposeful approach to partnerships and to making a positive difference to the region and the people who live there is paying off. By nurturing talent and ideas and providing them with the commercial input and skills that will help them succeed, it is boosting productivity, pay and green, high tech jobs in the region. In turn, that success will attract further investment into the area, helping it to deliver equality of opportunity in the long-term.
