The Challenge - About UKWON
The Challenge
UKWON aims to address several deficiencies in the UK tradition of work place change and innovation:
- There are too few spaces in which those with knowledge relevant to business come together to compare and consolidate thinking and practice. In many areas of business development there are a wide range of institutions each engaged in relatively isolated activity, often leading to an excess of competing models and approaches. Clearly this confuses employers and weakens the momentum of change. Proactive knowledge brokerage is required on an extensive scale.
- It is well understood that the integration of academic research and practice is weak in the UK. Recent government initiatives will help in the longer term, but experiences from across Europe show that Universities face an uphill struggle in addressing the needs of practitioners. In short, new types of multi-stakeholder, networked organisation are needed to create and deliver innovative evidence-based approaches to business transformation.
- In programmes and initiatives relating to business performance there is often little active management of outcomes to ensure the widespread distribution of new knowledge or innovative practice. Individual initiatives, however successful in their own terms, are never enough. The need is to ensure that publicly funded projects contribute to a managed process of cumulative and collective learning thereby reducing duplication and enhancing impact.
