connected-clusters-report-energy

University of Birmingham | Climate-KIC 37
Challenges
The cluster overcame many challenges during
this stage of its evolution.
Three academic institutions of differing types
and sizes working together – Edinburgh,
Napier and Heriot-Watt – created challenges
as well as opportunities. The new approach to
collaboration for a low-carbon future embodied
by ECCI and the Edinburgh cluster ensured
that traditional institutional rivalries around
research and funding were transcended.
The way the three institutions worked together
in a radically collaborative way was referenced
in the 2016 Guardian Sustainable Business
Award awarded to ECCI for its work on the
LCI project.
The traditional university model of knowledge
exchange as one-way broadcasting process
– new research and technology broadcast to
the outside world in academic terms – was
different to ECCI’s approach of stimulating
demand and being market-led.
ECCI worked with businesses and public
sector contacts across all of its areas of work
to ensure that different sectors collaborated
around challenges and opportunities and
to link researchers and innovators with end
users. A key example of this as was the
Smart Accelerator project, which worked
across the public, private and academic
sectors to convene project teams around
themed challenges ranging from smart cities
to sustainable islands. ClimateXChange also
forged a radically collaborative approach
to scoping projects and delivering the best
ideas, knowledge and evidence – co-creating
research priorities and programmes and
involving communities and businesses in
shaping and delivering academic evidence
and analysis.
A pipeline of businesses/projects had to be
created for practical action, such as the LCI
and Smart Accelerator projects, because it
was a nascent sector and ‘low-carbon’
was a new idea to many entrepreneurs.
ECCI effectively had to generate its own
low-carbon ecosystem.
ECCI used its cross-sectoral networks –
based around the professional contacts
books of key staff, in-house business
development professionals and formal
project partners – and marketing of funding
calls and opportunities to create a pipeline of
SMEs and infrastructure projects for the LCI
and Smart Accelerator initiatives.
ECCI had to make its cluster finances selfsustaining
within three years of starting, ie,
by the end of 2013. ECCI has been largely
reliant on cyclical project funding to keep
its operations going. In 2015, the cluster’s
flagship LCI project came to an end and no
other project funding was available immediately
to enable those skilled staff to be retained
within ECCI. A number of the project team
therefore didn’t have their contracts renewed.
There was no solution at the time.
During the growth phase, however, ECCI
developed new funding partnerships and
won a series of contracts which supported
subsequent and current staff teams, as
outlined above. ECCI also focused on
developing commercial streams of income
from its Edinburgh hub by hiring space out
for workspace, meetings and events.