Collaborating For Impact

Words by Arlen Pettitt

Photography by Christopher Owens

Dr Matt Sutherland’s job title is Associate Professor in Marketing within Northumbria University’s Newcastle Business School.

But that doesn’t even begin to describe the role he plays.

Both within the university, and with roles with Knowledge Exchange UK, The Open North Foundation and on the management board of the Small Business Charter, Matt has carved out a niche for himself as a conduit for interaction between the worlds of academia and business.

He refers to himself as bilingual, in that he knows Higher Education and his academic colleagues inside out, but can also speak to the challenges and opportunities faced by external stakeholders.

“In order to create impact we need to collaborate with industry, but there's a bit of a gap there in that academics haven’t been trained or supported on how to collaborate. That's the space I try to fill.”

Matt has been with Northumbria University for nearly two decades, having studied his PhD with the university before becoming a lecturer in the business school.

While he still spends time in the classroom each week, he also travels extensively across the UK meeting with other institutions, businesses and policymakers to champion the field of knowledge exchange.

“Universities are traditionally about research, and learning and teaching,” Sutherland explains, “but there's this third dimension called knowledge exchange, which is where groups of people come together to innovate and create economic and social impact.”

At a time when universities are under pressure financially, knowledge exchange is a valuable element to their offer, with Universities UK estimating knowledge exchange activity generates more than £8 billion of economic value each year.

In Matt’s view, the financial pressure within institutions, coupled with a competitive landscape for research funding, means academics have no choice but to become more outward-facing.

“In order to create impact we need to collaborate with industry,” he says. “But there's a bit of a gap there in that academics haven’t been trained or supported on how to collaborate. That's the space I try to fill.”

A significant chunk of Sutherland’s work is internal, working with colleagues to generate awareness of the need to embrace external impact, and to give them the tools to do it well. In practice, that involves a lot of connecting people together, and recognising the huge value of networks - both informal ones, and more formal organisational networks.

“You can steal some great stuff from people who are far more wise than you and I like that.”

One of those is Knowledge Exchange UK, which began as a spin-out of the University of Cambridge more than twenty years ago as a forum for professional support staff to share best practice around things like intellectual property, licensing and procurement.

Matt is coming to the end of a four year stint as the organisation’s stakeholder director, and talks about himself as an ‘intruder’: an academic amongst Knowledge Exchange practitioners, and from an ex-polytechnic surrounded by Russell Group representatives.

But with this background, he brought an important new perspective, and was also able to learn lots to bring back to his institution.

“I find the beauty of being in a non-executive role is not being gobby but being just a good listener,” he says. “You can steal some great stuff from people who are far more wise than you and I like that.”

“We need to communicate the commercial benefits of our research – not just the methodological detail on how we did it. We need to communicate more to stakeholders. The problem is how do we do it?”

Matt has also been involved for the past seven years with the Small Business Charter, an accreditation which helps align the work of business schools to the needs of SMEs, as well as delivering the Help to Grow: Management course through its business school network.

Between his involvement with Knowledge Exchange UK and the Small Business Charter, Sutherland has chaired assessment panels at 41 other universities, giving him an unusual level of exposure in an industry which tends to be quite insular. Work that he disseminates internationally on his award-winning business podcast, Why Small Business Matters.

He credits Northumbria with giving him the space and time to do that, and in seeing the value in focusing on building connections with business.

“What we're talking about is applied research,” Matt says. “Knowledge exchange is applied research. If we think about academic publications, they are so important because they are an arena for really thoughtful, clever academic thinking, but the people who read those are your research colleagues, your friends.”

Instead, Sutherland argues, we need to be “taking that really good academic thinking, but putting it into practical skills scenarios.”

That tests the theories, he continues, and leads to real impacts in the economy.

“There's a need for academic openness,” Matt says. “And I think there is a fear factor.”

That fear factor comes when academics are asked or encouraged to put themselves out there in different ways, for example over social media.

Sutherland is methodical in his own approach, mapping out stakeholders and those he engages with every year, and then carving out time to produce content that’s relevant to them.

He pulls ideas for strategic content from everywhere: Newcastle United, motorcycle fan pages, and - at the moment - lots from sales coaches.

“If you scratch away at the surface,” he explains, “what they have is a framework for creating noise. They've got a strategy for deliberate content, which is transactional.”

“I'm really interested in promoting research,” he continues, “in a way which will get a response from somebody who I think would be interested in funding it, or I'm really interested in working with a body or an organisation that wants to learn more.”

A hurdle for academics is the different techniques required to reach different audiences.

“We need to communicate the commercial benefits of our research – not just the methodological detail on how we did it,” Matt says, “we need to communicate more to stakeholders. The problem is how do we do it? Writing journalistically, writing in a very non-academic language, being confident, applying imagery which complements the narrative.”

That’s not always easy for those used to writing for academic journals, to an audience which is typically deep into the detail of a subject rather than pressed for time and on the frontline of a business.

But that tension creates an opportunity for people like Matt, who can sit between the two and speak both languages and can forge the connections needed to get the latest research out into the world.

Connect Dr Matt Sutherland