Connecting a new generation of SMEs with UK universities
#Collaborate #Innovate #Grow
Last year, several thousand SMEs partnered with universities. Your competitors may be amongst them.
Yet for many SMEs, UK universities are an untapped resource with world-class academics ready and waiting to help, on specific R+D and innovation projects, and with wider advice.
Got an image of academics as hiding away in laboratories or libraries? Using long words and work to longer timescales? In fact, universities are working harder than ever to put more of their ideas and expertise to practical use.
We find you the right academics, fast
Step1: Tell us about your company – the change you want to make or the challenge you need to overcome.
Step2: We share it with our network of universities who identify the most suitable academics to help.
Step3: We send you the offers from the universities . You pick one, get in touch and crack on with the work.
We offer an alternative to others' complex search tools, trawling university websites looking for contacts, and making nugatory calls to academics who may not want to know. We do the networking on your behalf.
We invite universities to bid for the chance to work with you. You're the customer. It's like an ITT. The competition between unis encourages them to keep their costs down. During the current pilot, too, you pay Smarter nothing.
We work with the universities’ own intermediaries, the people who know their own academics, their specialisms and personalities. It means you get the right match for your business.
We help bridge the gulf in language and culture that can exist between business and academics. We don't expect you to use academic jargon or know how universities work.
And we're working for people and planet too
We support businesses as a growing force for good in the world, delivering social and environmental benefits as well as economic. Universities can increase that further - and we're helping to join the two.
We're a Not4Profit. We're not tied to any one university or controlled by external investors. Our loyalties as well as our goal are clear.
