Stuart Wilkinson is Assistant Director, Innovation & Engagement at the University of Oxford (his university page, LinkedIn), and a Fellow of Reuben College. He works across the university, trying to create impact from the research that academics do. That ranges from helping a new technology to be launched as a start-up, through to getting results from humanities research into policy.
Our conversation covers:
-The tensions between curiosity-led research (which can yield utterly unexpected uses) and challenge-led research (which is aimed at a particular problem).
-The role of knowledge exchange in and from universities, as part of national and global innovation systems. (For more on the functions of innovation systems see Hekkert et al in their classic 2007 paper).
-How that role has evolved out of what used to be called 'tech transfer'.
-Tells the story of YASA, an electric motor technology that was first developed in Oxford and, after some 13 years, was bought by Mercedes. The story is partly about needing patient backing (from the university, and from government). Plus, the need to pivot as the landscape changes, in the case from a future where hydrogen cars looked possible, to a present where it is clear that electric vehicles are the way forward.
-Link to the UN High Level Climate Champion's Race to Zero initiative, and Nigel Topping's emphasis on the automotive sector.
-How the success of the vaccine (which had been in development in Oxford for a while before the COVID pandemic hit) has galvanised their work.
This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.
