Benefits of participation

Benefits to researchers

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There are a number of benefits to researchers from enrolling in Engage such as:

• Inspiration: you will discover the benefits of working with Edinburgh Innovations and industry partners
• Impactful projects: how to develop your research in ways that are strategic and technically challenging
• Build your profile: make the right connections so opportunities come to you
• Acquiring skills: that can accelerate your progression to successful commercial projects
• Confidence and Initiative: to enable you to identify and act on opportunities
• Engagement: as a result of participating, there will be an increase in the number of researchers across the University engaging with industry and Edinburgh Innovations support
• Get started: Each course provides you with something you can action, either now or in future, e.g. a Networking plan, a proposition for a collaboration, an analysis of what IP you are generating and mechanisms to protect it
• Getting to know EI: you will find it easier to get started and know how to reach out and the first steps to take

Benefits to Schools

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There are also several benefits to Schools from their academics enrolling in Engage such as:

• Impact: enables the School to increase the impact of their research by applying it to solve real-world challenges
• Increasing revenue: enables the School to increase research through more industry-funded projects
• New staff engagement: Engage can be used as part of the induction programme for new starts
• Addressing Funder priorities: Engage enables a two-way path between academia and industry, the foundations required for the Concordat for Researcher Development
• Personal Development Plan: Engage provides staff with an achievable structure and development outcomes
• Culture shift: Engage fosters a culture of external engagement at the University

Bespoke offers

Engage courses can be tailored and contextualised for a particular group in a School or research centre or an event, e.g. your Post Doctoral Researchers, for a team away day.  Please contact Engage@ei.ed.ac.uk to discuss with our course development team, and we’ll co-develop your sessions with you.

Benefits of bespoke delivery:

• Create propositions for Industry: This can help you build common themes and propositions for your centre/team’s strategic development.
• New partners: Open the door to new relationships and partnerships as your researchers reach out to explore opportunities with potential clients and partners that you can build on collectively.
• Team building: In a bespoke offer, we can work with larger groups in workshop environments, either face to face or online, allowing you to focus on what matters most to your area and allow more open discussion and group work.

Testimonials

The first semester of the programme was well-received by participants. They were very positive about the structure, facilitation and content, especially the flexibility of blended learning. Some of their comments on what was valuable to participants:

Confidence and a clear idea of how to engage with external partners in a way that is most likely to be  successful/productive. I would recommend it!

The understanding a partner's requirements and pre-meeting template was a top takeaway, with the concrete examples of questions to ask being extremely helpful. I got specific information and specific case studies from this course which was fantastic.

Active listening and thinking from others' perspective - because I'm now aware that I don't do this enough, hadn't thought about this before.

Your impression that everyone else around you knows more than you of the topic under consideration is not necessarily the case. Relax about your level of knowledge, and focus more on how you can facilitate linkages, and realisation of a joint activity rather than worrying too much about the detail in your own area, that you will almost certainly work out anyway.

Show interest/passion for what external organisation are doing and offer support to try to help them achieve it. Focus on them, rather than myself. Imposter syndrome - don't be afraid of it.