NEWS

Making those initial connections is not the difficult part. The challenge comes in what happens next.

Across the North West, networking events, introductions and knowledge sharing are happening regularly, and there is no shortage of interest in collaboration, yet many businesses still find it difficult to turn those early conversations into partnerships that deliver real outcomes.

In many cases, this comes down to how differently organisations operate. Businesses tend to focus on pace, delivery and commercial outcomes, while universities work within research frameworks, funding cycles and longer-term exploration. When these approaches are not aligned from the outset, conversations can lose direction, expectations become unclear and progress slows, even where there is genuine opportunity on both sides.

There is a proven way to structure collaboration, but it is not widely used.

Guidance already exists to help organisations work together more effectively. The ISO 4400X family of standards for collaborative relationship management offers a practical framework for building and managing partnerships in a more structured way.

Rather than adding complexity, these standards are designed to make collaboration easier to approach. They provide a framework to enable organisations to clearly identify the need for collaboration, identify and select partners that best address that need, develop how the partners will work together and create value from the relationship. This encourages clarity from the outset around shared goals, responsibilities and expectations, they help remove much of the uncertainty that can slow progress.

ISO 44001 focuses on how collaborative relationships are built and maintained, while ISO/TS 44006 applies this thinking specifically to university and business partnerships. For organisations that are unfamiliar with working together, this kind of structure can make the process feel more straightforward and easier to manage.

In practice, most businesses won’t need to engage directly with the standards themselves, but will benefit from a more structured approach being applied to how partnerships are set up and delivered. Through programmes, partnerships and sector engagement, organisations such as RTC North help translate this into something practical, supporting businesses to navigate collaboration with greater confidence.

For businesses, this means approaching collaboration with a clear idea of the challenge they are trying to solve and the outcomes they need to achieve. For universities, it means aligning expertise more closely to real-world application and making it easier for businesses to engage.

When this structure is in place, partnerships tend to progress more smoothly, relationships are stronger and the outcomes are more meaningful for both sides.

The North West has strong foundations for collaboration. The opportunity now is to build on this by making it more consistent, more deliberate and more effective.