Member Article

University to create national business hub in Darlington

Plans to create a nationally renowned business hub in Darlington have been announced by a North-East University described by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) as “Britain’s best for working with businesses”.

From September, Teesside University’s flagship £13 million Darlington campus will become its new front door for businesses – offering every organisation from SMEs to multinational blue-chip companies a single point of contact to access all R&D, training and professional education support.

Each year, the University helps hundreds of businesses with a range of services including; research & innovation, consultancy, knowledge exchange, start-up incubation and mentoring, and graduate placement.

These services alongside its highly acclaimed success in enterprise saw the University announced as a winner of a prestigious royal accolade - the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for “excellence at world-class level”.

The University will hold this distinguished honour until 2018. The award validates the praise from Dr Vince Cable MP following a previous BIS visit to the University to meet its staff and start-up businesses.

Building on this reputation, Teesside will locate key personnel from its business services team, as well as selected academic staff from its Schools and innovation services at the Central Park site which provides unrivalled connectivity with the East Coast railway line at Darlington station and the A1 to attract businesses from across the country. This exciting initiative in Darlington will be led by Laura Woods – currently the University’s director of Academic Enterprise.

To support this repackaging of its business-facing activities, the University has appointed Dean of Teesside University Business School, Alastair Thomson, to a new specialist role engaging large, multinational private sector organisations across the UK – building on his University and professional networks including his former role as regional chairman of the Institute of Directors.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Graham Henderson CBE DL said: “Teesside prides itself as being a business-facing University and we are very proud of our record of supporting the local, regional and national economy.

“We see Darlington as being a ‘front door’ for our business services where we can work with companies and ensure that they are given the support they need.

“Under the leadership of the University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Business Engagement, Professor Cliff Hardcastle and with the support of Laura and her team at a new business hub in Darlington, and Alastair in his important new role, we’re looking ahead to an even brighter future from September.”

Central Park in Darlington where the hub is based is already home to Darlington College, one of the five further education college partners of Teesside University in the Tees Valley and the highly-prestigious National Biologics Manufacturing Centre (NBMC), with the NBMC currently having a temporary base in the University’s building as work began this month on its new building nearby.

Further developments of the site include a Business Incubation Centre for start-up companies and the possibility of a ‘National Horizon Centre’ to be utilised by the University and a range of private sector partners as a learning, conference and residential training resource.

The University’s vision to create a new hub for all of its business-facing services mirrors the recommendations put forward in the recent Government-commissioned review by Sir Andrew Witty, the chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, which recommended that universities should be drivers of economic growth and would ‘triage’ a company’s needs and direct them to the appropriate department.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Teesside University .