Lynne Craig and Edinburgh Innovations

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How has Edinburgh Innovations (EI) helped you?

In my role as Deputy Director of Innovation at EFI, working with EI to enable innovation is really central to my practice, and it has really helped me connect into Edinburgh's ecosystems and with the different knowledge banks here.

Design Informatics has a history of working very closely with Edinburgh Innovations and I’ve worked with many amazing colleagues in EI on everything from events to big picture strategy. I feel very, very fortunate to have access, in a university context, to that expertise and support.

What skills and support have EI provided?

Several things: one has been creating foundations for networks that are open to my approach to translational knowledge and weaving disciplines together. EI has been very helpful with laying the foundations for those networks, for example by organising events and selecting attendees that might be open to what I’m proposing. In addition, they are networked across Innovate UK, and proactively highlight research opportunities that are aligned to my approach.

I'm ambitious in what I think needs to be built in terms of developing the conditions to enable a connected innovation ecosystem of design, robotics, data and sustainability, working with some brilliant colleagues across the University, and together we’ve made some large-scale funding applications to try and get those ambitions realised.

With the support of EI I’ve been able to draw partners into those funding bids and that's been very helpful.

Has anything or anyone been particularly helpful or worthy of recognition?

Claire Pembleton and Caroline Parkinson have been excellent, not only in terms of hosting and facilitating workshops, but in deftly navigating creative leadership and business networks in the creative sector. They work collaboratively with me to ideate and develop projects, identify spaces for opportunities, and plug me into like-minded networks, both internally and externally - this is invaluable insider knowledge!

Victoria Darbyshire and Charlotte Lee-Woolf support and champion emergent work at the interface of sustainability, design and technology, helping to navigate new approaches, and galvanising communities.

Lorraine Kerr and Alison Bond have been brilliant supporters and facilitators who have helped position areas of my work across multiple fields and discipline boundaries in an international context.

Within EFI, many of my EI colleagues are focused on developing and scaling new approaches to innovation contexts, ideas and outputs across our vast and diverse infrastructure, drawing on a range of expertise in the right contexts. This is where I see EI and the University work together at their best.