A Higher Education Institution (HEI) may have quality research capabilities and a number of centres of research excellence in various academic areas, but mere presence of a centre of research excellence does not translate to research impact for the institution (in terms of financial returns). A conceptual framework presented based on Author's practical hands-on experience in UK may be adopted to 'maximise' conversion rate of research excellence into research impact.

1. An upcoming paper related to ‘Research Impact and IP Commercialisation’ within the context of Higher Education
Author: Shanjoy Mairembam (B.Eng, MBA, LLM), Freelance Innovation & Growth Consultant based in Leicester (UK), shanjoym@gmail.com
[www.linkedin.com/in/shanjoymairembam]
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Convert Research Excellence into Research Impact via adopting integrated innovation
management framework
Abstract:
In the current HE funding landscape, UK universities and other Higher Educational Institutions
(HEIs) ought to opt for giving emphasis on ‘building global Research Excellence in their chosen
academic domains to remain relevant in the HE sector’ and ‘maximising conversion rate of
existing Research Excellence into proportionate Research Impact to sustain financially in the
longer term’. Adopted strategies of HEIs on teaching, research and knowledge exchange tend to
operate in-silo due to absence of an integrated innovation management framework (IIMF)
deployment. Adoption of IIMF can enable HEIs in realising returns on investment from ‘more’
number of completed research projects. Since HEIs deal with Knowledge (in creating, sharing
and managing) on a daily basis, it is essential that every staff (in academic and professional
support units) is not only made aware of handling Intellectual Properties (IPs) appropriately but
also made to practice IP Management/Exploitation norms within their assigned responsibilities.
In simple terms, IIMF means having ‘a practice of IP Management’ to record all research and
KE activities in the institution in a single centralised registry and ‘a practice of IP Exploitation’
to build upon the IP Management practice for maximising value to the institution (directly/
indirectly or monetarily/non-monetarily). For the purpose of this paper, Research Excellence is
referring to ‘presence of high quality academic researchers and ability to create pioneering
research outputs’ and Research Impact is referring to ‘quantifiable benefits (including those
qualitative benefits) estimated in terms of financial numbers’.
Most HEIs have a roughly defined research and enterprise strategy (to provide a high level
direction of focus and defined priority activities within the scope of research, partnership
development, facilities, knowledge exchange) and often opt for research-led or/and practice-led
teaching strategy (in order to command competitive advantage over the many private skills
training companies and Higher Education Providers - HEPs). Their strategy documents (e.g.
institutional HEIF strategy document) highlight a series of successfully operating
centres/programmes (often funded in part/full via an ongoing external funding source), but rather
as list of disconnected gems without a clear statement on what the institution stands for in terms
its ‘self-sustainable’ core value/asset and how the institution will continue to remain relevant
once those external funding has been exhausted. Even though HEIs have been engaging in KE
activities since few decades (supporting local/international businesses and not-for-profit
organisations), the operating approach seems to be in ‘expense mode to carry out required tasks’
instead of ‘investment mode to create self-sustainable assets in the longer term’. HEIs operate in
a non-sustainable ‘ad-hoc mode’ of ‘get money from whichever funding sources outside the
HEI’ to deliver research and KE services as per the funders’ objectives and suspend operation of
all such activities (incl. staff and infrastructure) upon exhaustion of the available funding.
Presence of Research Concordat and Research Excellence Framework (REF) has helped HEIs
plan towards building own relevant Research Excellence areas/units, while the recent
introduction of KE Concordat and Knowledge Excellence Framework (KEF) is likely support
HEIs to build institutional capacity towards adopting appropriate KE strategy. Interestingly, both
concordats and frameworks have missed to advise HEIs on the need to have ‘IP Management
and IP Exploitation’ at the core of their research and KE strategies to guide all activities instead
of merely mentioning as a component that the HEIs ought to consider for delivery of their
research and KE activities as when the need arises.

2. Author: Shanjoy Mairembam (B.Eng, MBA, LLM), shanjoym@gmail.com [www.linkedin.com/in/shanjoymairembam]
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Keywords:
Research Impact, Research Commercialisation, Knowledge Exchange (KE)1
, IP Management, IP
Exploitation, TTO2
, HEIF3
, Higher Education4
, Sustainable policy, KEF5
, REF6
, HEBCIS7
.
Originality/Value:
The conceptual framework presented in this paper is based on the author’s practical hands-on
experience of having delivered a consultancy report to create a sustainable HEI Incubator for a
UK university client and also worked in few UK universities on KE and TTO roles. Due to
confidentiality obligation on the author, names of certain UK ‘universities, projects, companies
and local councils’ used in this paper have been paraphrased to conceal the actual identities.
1 KE refers to engagement of HEIs (esp. academic staffs, researchers, students) with businesses,
public and third sector services, the community and wider public to exchange ideas, evidence
and expertise (which include activities such as academic consultancy, intellectual property
commercialisation, research and development by students and academics, networking
engagement). Also explore ‘https://re.ukri.org/knowledge-exchange/’.
2 TTO refers to a professional unit which is responsible for technology transfer and other aspects
of IP (Intellectual Property) commercialisation of research that take place in a university.
3 Higher Education Innovation Fund: https://re.ukri.org/knowledge-exchange/the-higher-
education-innovation-fund-heif/
4 In UK, Higher Education (HE) refers to education at the levels of undergraduate (UG) and
postgraduate (PG), and Higher Education Institution (HEI), according to Further and Higher
Education Act 1992, is an institution which is either one of the three entities – (1) a university,
(2) an institution conducted by a higher education corporation, (3) a designated institution [which
is eligible to receive funding support from HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council of
England), now known as ‘Research England’; and not including those considered as Further
Education (FE) Colleges]. In general, HE Provider (HEP) usually refers to any organisation that
delivers higher education.
5 Knowledge Exchange Framework: https://kef.ac.uk/
6 Research Excellence Framework: https://www.ref.ac.uk/
7 Higher Education Community and Business Interaction Survey: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-
and-analysis/business-community