Mechanisms of collaboration between creative small, medium and micro-sized enterprises and higher education institutions: reflections on the Creativeworks London Creative Voucher scheme

This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant Number AH/J005142/1].This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant Number AH/J005142/1].This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant Number AH/J005142/1].According to the literature, university-industry collaborations are far from straightforward. This paper adds to this work by looking at how the process of collaboration has fared between higher education institutions (HEIs) and small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the creative and cultural industries (CCI). It does this by looking at the preliminary findings of Creativeworks London’s (CWL) Creative Voucher Scheme. The findings emerged from an analysis of application data, ex post project final reports and interview data. The results to date show that: first, past experience in university – industry collaborations is tremendously beneficial to the success of the collaboration ; second, the creative industries engages with a number of different actors that speak different collaborative languages, actors are needed that are able to communicate at multiple levels at once; third, the collaborative process is not simply a dualistic one between university and industry but multi-layered involving a number of knowledge brokers in different positions in-between and at the interstices of these organizational structures; fourth, administrative expediency with regards to implementing these voucher schemes varies from university to university which point to potentially large departmental differences that can affect the intended collaborations; and fifth, there needs to be a managing of expectations and a balancing of different incentives when it comes to negotiating the outcome of these collaborations since university and industry move at different speeds and value different things

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

In theory, democracy is a bulwark against socially harmful policies. In practice, however, democracies frequently adopt and maintain policies that are damaging. How can this paradox be explained? The influence of special interests and voter ignorance are two leading explanations. I offer an alternative story of how and why democracy fails. The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational -- and they vote accordingly. Despite their lack of knowledge, voters are not humble agnostics; instead, they confidently embrace a long list of misconceptions. Economic policy is the primary activity of the modern state. And if there is one thing that the public deeply misunderstands, it is economics. People do not grasp the "invisible hand" of the market, with its ability to harmonize private greed and the public interest. I call this anti-market bias. They underestimate the benefits of interaction with foreigners. I call this anti-foreign bias. They equate prosperity not with production, but with employment. I call this make-work bias. Finally, they are overly prone to think that economic conditions are bad and getting worse. I call this pessimistic bias. In the minds of many, Winston Churchill's famous aphorism cuts the conversation short: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." But this saying overlooks the fact that governments vary in scope as well as form. In democracies the main alternative to majority rule is not dictatorship, but markets. A better understanding of voter irrationality advises us to rely less on democracy and more on the market

The Daily Texan

Texas Student Medi

Questioning Knowledge Transfer And Learning Processes Across R&D Project Teams

This paper addresses popular notions of the generation and sharing of knowledge in organisations commonly described as knowledge transfer. We question the appropriateness of the notion of transfer of knowledge for increasing our understanding of knowledge creation and learning processes in R&D organisations. We suggest that this notion of "transfer", limits our understanding of the important interactive processes used to generate knowledge and to enhance the spread of knowledge. Findings from interviews with senior research scientists challenge the notion of knowledge transfer and instead provide support for the notion of knowledge as constructed meaning in an arena with multiple players and social interactions

Heat exchanger/reactors (HEX reactors): Concepts, technologies: State-of-the-art

Process intensification is a chemical engineering field which has truly emerged in the past few years and is currently rapidly growing. It consists in looking for safer operating conditions, lower waste in terms of costs and energy and higher productivity; and away to reach such objectives is to develop multifunctional devices such as heat exchanger/reactors for instance. This review is focused on the latter and makes a point on heat exchanger/reactors. After a brief presentation of requirements due to transposition from batch to continuous apparatuses, heat exchangers/reactors at industrial or pilot scales and their applications are described