Aims and Objectives

• To ensure the efficient design, management and costing of CBR project surveys including the CBR biennial survey of small and medium sized enterprises.
• To advise on questionnaire design, survey method, choice of sampling frames, and data inputting and cleaning procedures in CBR project surveys.
• To advise on statistical software use with CBR datasets.
• To archive data at CBR, and where appropriate organise the deposit of ESRC sponsored datasets with the UK Data Archive.
• To act as a technical advisor to other members of the CBR on the contents of and access to proprietary and official data sets, a great number (e.g. FAME, Datastream, ONS) of which are utilised by CBR staff.
• To oversee the continuing upgrading of the CBR User Database, so as to ensure that it becomes a central part of the new dissemination and communications strategy.

RECENT PROJECTS

Survey of Small and Medium Sized Businesses - UK

The latest in our series of our UK SME surveys took place at the end of 2011 - from October to December. Questionnaires were sent to the over 1,100 survivors from our earlier panels and to a new sample of around 16,400 independent UK companies. The survey consisted of a 9 page postal questionnaire, which could either be returned by post or completed on the web. As an incentive to respond, we offered an iPAD. The team also committed themselves personally to make a charitable donation of £2 per completed response to 3 charities (Oxfam, UNICEF, and Shelter).

We received over 1,900 responses, a response rate of around 11%.

£3,244 has been donated to charity (not everyone selected a charity). The iPAD was won by Alice Designs Limited, Reading.

Surveys of Small and Medium Sized Businesses - Australia and New Zealand

The team has been working in a collaboration of small and medium sized business surveys led by Alan Hughes with colleagues in University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand and University of Queensland Business School, Australia. The surveys took place in both countries at the end of 2010, in New Zealand between November - December 2010 and in Australia between December 2010 - April 2011. The survey instruments were coordinated so that a comparison could be undertaken between UK, New Zealand and Australia.

Further work is in progress with Doshisha University, Kyoto, to extend the programme to include Japan.

Knowledge Exchange between Arts and Humanities and the Private, Public and Third Sectors: A Comparative Perspective

This research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council was carried out between July 2010 and March 2011. It analysed the pattern, scope and impact of interactions between academics in the Arts & Humanities with external organisations in the private, public and third sectors. The research used the academic and business survey datasets created for the project 'University-Industry Knowledge Exchange: demand pull, supply push and the public space role of higher education institutions' (over 22,000 academics and over 2,500 business enterprises in all sectors of the UK economy) to provide a detailed and comprehensive picture of such interactions in the UK and evaluate them in a comparative context with other disciplines.

The project focused on details of the interactions and characteristics of 3,650 academics from the Arts and Humanities, who responded to the survey of academics; and on the range of interactions between the business community and the university sector, including the Arts and Humanities, of respondents to the enterprise survey. The project was augmented with a series of case studies of interactions between academics from the Arts and Humanities with other organizations.

The report was launched May 17th in London (further details).

New Modes of Innovation: Managerial and Strategic Business Practices and Open Innovation

The growing interest in open innovation has been driven by a phenomenon where organisations are increasingly moving towards network-based forms of innovation, sourcing ideas through licensing agreements, formal alliances and mergers and acquisitions and the use of a wide variety of sources of knowledge for innovation.

In order to deepen and extend our existing knowledge on the nature and extent of open innovation among UK firms, this project aims to shed light on organisational mechanisms and capabilities as well as institutional arrangements required to foster effective open innovation.

In particular, it addresses:

• How do patterns of usage of OI practices vary across firms, sectors and size?
• What are the factors driving the firms' usage of OI practices?
• How do the firms' usage of OI practices affect their innovativeness and performance?