Digital Economy Success Stories

Readers of this blog might be interested in some of the activities going on at the Centre for Strategic Innovation which has really bedded in since our launch  in November 2011. I wanted the CSI, in the spirit of innovation, to be a bit disruptive – my vision was, recognition for top-quality research, externally and internally, but also, to be experimental, to reach out and be interdisciplinary, and to connect with industry on leading edge knowledge exchange. I also wanted the ethos to be open to new suggestions, accessible, bottom-up and fun.

Anyway we’ve had a good start, particularly gaining new  research recognition internally and externally in the EPRSC/Digital Economy/New Economic models strand. For example, I just obtained a 3K literature review grant, “Digital Disruption of the Value Creation Ecosystem– How new business models emerge”. This extends my earlier work as part of Creator  which was again funded by the EPSRC and addressed business models in the digital domain.

But more importantly, there’s news of a significant £780,000 EPSRC research grant award to Prof. mc Schraefel of ECS and our own Dr. Stephen Rhys Thomas, leading a multidisciplinary team from Southampton drawn from ECS, Management and Economics. The successful bid was in response to an EPSRC Digital Economy call for New Economic Models. Congratulations to all concerned!

This EPSRC/DE/NEMODE research strand (value creation, lean/agile business models, underlying processes)  has been complemented with  a seminar series,  Temporality and value at the intersection of arts and technology: advancing theoretical and methodological development and two collaborative events with ECS and the Digital Economy USRG (thanks to Lisa and Graeme), SXSC1and 2 that have brought in 00s of people from across the university, region, and industry, exciting interest as a rapid-platform for knowledge exchange, future research collaborations, especially in ECS, and also, check out the link to see the fun  part, some great vids here.

As well as that strand, there are many, many other areas of interest, publications, grants, developments and initiatives I could have included here – this is just to give  a flavour. Again with ECS we’re hosting an IET-sponsored Raspberry Pi event on April 25 (sold out), and a lunch meeting with Qinetiq in May. I’ll be organising a lunch meeting down the line to discuss these developments and future collaborations, so watch out for the date.  So please do get in touch if there’s anything we can usefully collaborate on.