The New Service Economy - KK-stiftelsen

The New Service Economy
If CTF is to be successful in creating a sustainable financing structure in
the future, then a stronger and more sustainable contribution from the university
to create a long-term CTF finance plan (up to 5 years) is needed.
Another way of developing and sustaining the research from the profile is to
find new and alternative sources of funding, for example two projects are
conducted on packaging and steel industry supported by EU’s structural
funds. However, these projects do not appear to be strongly related to the
“service” focus of CTF.
During the six year period of Knowledge Foundation financing CTF has
grown continuously, but for the future the planning for sustainable financing
will be the most important task on both the university and CTF.
7. Information & Communication
CTF has informed a variety of constituents about their research activities,
particularly the collaboration with firms, via a wide range of media. To illustrate,
CTF activities have been mentioned in media (newspapers, TV
etc.), the researchers have presented the results in many scientific and practitioner-oriented
seminars, and they have organised firm-internal seminars
within the collaborating firms. CTF regularly publishes newsletters and their
web site is well structured and regularly updated. Thus, many information
activities have been carried out. The researchers have primarily communicated
their findings to the collaborating firms directly and to the international
scientific community. The latter has been done via the conference
presentations and the scientific publications, which are numerous. The research
group states in the self-evaluation report that the researchers have
attempted to write articles in popular business magazines, but it has been
difficult to get them published. The research has also been communicated to
students via the teaching activities that the researchers have carried out domestically
as well as internationally. All in all, the CTF has taken care of the
information task.
CTF states in their self-evaluation report that the main strategy for communicating
the research results has been via personal dialogue – workshops,
meetings, person-to-person interactions, and so forth. They seem to have
been quite successful in that providing information to industrial partners.
However, a general overarching information and communication strategy
seems to be lacking and there does not seem to be any one person who is
particularly responsible for an information communication strategy. There is
no strategy for communication to the public via mass media or to political or
industrial decision-makers (outside of the partner-firms). The apparent lack
of such a strategy and the relatively low success in mass media communication
may explain why CTF has not received the awareness and influence on
research policy that it deserves. Not having a well-articulated communication
strategy may also have hindered the research results from being com-
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