Professor John Holden and Carol Prokopyszyn: Making the Leap: A Powerhouse of Innovation
Between October and December, we are running a series of Viewpoint blogs written by our University Executive to give their personal perspectives on our new strategy to 2035, play back what we heard, explain the choices we are making, and set out how we will test, learn and scale to deliver our strategy.
In this piece, Professor John Holden, Vice-President for Civic Engagement and Innovation and Carol Prokopyszyn, Chief Financial Officer give their insights into the leap: A powerhouse of innovation. You can explore the strategy on our webpage, or download the full strategy text.
Making the leap: A powerhouse of innovation
Throughout the strategy development process, one question kept coming back: what exactly do we mean by innovation? It’s a deceptively simple question. Innovation is a word that gets used in many ways by different people – and without definition risks becoming just another meaningless buzzword.
We heard very clearly from our community that innovation at Manchester must reflect who we are and what we value, not just copy a narrow, tech-only definition from elsewhere. So, we’ve shaped a definition rooted in what our people told us matters and what we know can positively impact the world around us.
Defining innovation at Manchester
From Manchester for the world defines innovation as the process of making things better through new ideas, new ways, and new things. Yes, that includes developing and commercialising new technology – but it also spans a much broader set of activities that enable people to flourish and society to progress. It includes the work we do with companies, social enterprises, governments and other partners to develop, test and adopt new products, services and processes. It includes the work we do with communities to co-design new initiatives, how we drive system-wide improvements in public services and our health system, and how we support people in work to upskill to access new opportunities. And, critically, it encompasses how we unlock the full potential of our students to be the innovation-savvy entrepreneurs and workforce of the future.
Innovation at Manchester will take a whole-ecosystem approach, grounded in the understanding that it is not a linear process, and that the University’s success is closely tied to the strength of the region we are part of. Innovation happens when academics, professional services colleagues and students collaborate with our rich network of start-ups, scale-ups, large corporates, investors, alumni, governments, third-sector organisations, public services and other partners to develop and scale ideas that solve real-world problems and create real change across society and the economy.
Finally, central to our definition of innovation is that it must be inclusive. That means promoting innovation that benefits people and the planet: creating better jobs, supporting sustainable economic growth, improving healthcare and public services, and contributing to a richer and more vibrant cultural sector. In other words, innovation that makes a positive difference to people’s lives – here in Manchester and around the world.
From Manchester for the world, our new University strategy to 2035 has five leaps – bold choices where we’ll go further and faster to become the university the future demands. We challenged our students to explain each in just one minute. Can they beat the clock?
From Manchester for the world, our new University strategy to 2035 has five leaps – bold choices where we’ll go further and faster to become the university the future demands. We challenged our students to explain each in just one minute. Can they beat the clock?
Rooted in purpose
The second most common question we heard through the strategy process was: why should the University focus on innovation? In a world of stretched resources, why does it matter? It’s a fair question and it deserves a clear answer.
There are five key reasons. First, innovation is a powerful route to impact, accelerating our ideas into real-world application at scale. Second, it drives revenue into the University, through spinouts, licensing, industry partnerships, leveraging public R&D funding and philanthropy, enabling us to do more of the work we care about. Third, it is central to our social licence to operate: it is increasingly clear that Government expects universities to drive growth, and innovation is the most direct way we do this. Fourth, innovation enriches the student experience by providing opportunities to gain new skills and real-world experience.
The fifth, and perhaps the most important reason to focus on innovation is also the simplest. It is what we were set up to do: as England’s first civic university, we exist for the good of our city and region. This is innovation as a core purpose, not the latest fad.
There is also a harder truth underneath all of this: just like any globally leading organisation, unless we innovate, we will not remain competitive. Digital technologies are disrupting every sector and shifting societal behaviours and needs, and universities now operate in an intensely competitive global market. Stand still and we risk being left behind. As someone memorably asked during the consultation: in ten years’ time, do we want to be like a Netflix or a Blockbuster? Innovation at Manchester isn’t’ just about helping other organisations, we must innovate on ourselves too.
Making it happen
So, if we are clear about what we mean by innovation, and why it matters, then the obvious next question is: what will we actually do?
The first thing to say is that we are already doing a lot. We have nationally leading technology transfer, business engagement, student entrepreneurship functions, and specialist innovation centres and initiatives operating across all three faculties. We are already deeply connected to our region and working in partnership to strengthen the innovation ecosystem that we are at the heart of. And we have had a headstart in making our innovation leap. For the past year we have been building a new capability – Unit M – to align our existing innovation capabilities, and develop new ones, to support the evolving needs of staff, students, alumni, business, government and partners.
Our strong starting point gives confidence that our 10-year ambition – to become Europe’s most inclusive and impactful innovation ecosystem – is achievable. Our approach to realise this ambition is grounded in three priorities.
First, we will build a thriving innovation community across the University. Innovation is a shared endeavour, and we will support students and colleagues from every discipline to collaborate, develop ideas, and build the confidence and capability to innovate, working with alumni, civic partners, mentors, funders, business leaders and community organisations to help realise this ambition. We will enable our community to thrive by developing the policies, programmes, funding, spaces and networks to make Manchester the university of choice for staff and students who want to innovate.
Second, we will provide clearer, faster pathways to collaborate and grow ideas. Almost everyone we spoke to – academic and professional services staff, students, alumni, businesses, government and other partners – told us the University is too hard to navigate. So, we will simplify it. We will mobilise and integrate all our innovation assets – including Unit M, The Innovation Factory, Sister, the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre, and Business Engagement and Knowledge Exchange. Unit M is our gateway to innovation, working across the University to help unlock our full range of skills and expertise for our local and global partners to turn ideas into action, and in Autumn 2026 we will open William Kay House, as a new home for innovation at the heart of campus, open to all our community. We will also join up our plans for innovation with our plans for research – including through the supercharged platforms – and with our teaching and learning activity, for example by creating opportunities for our students in the innovation economy through Partner-Enabled Learning or meeting employers’ skills needs in new ways through Manchester Online.
Third, we will work in partnership to drive inclusive growth for our region. We will deepen our relationships with civic partners – including Manchester City Council, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and others – to strengthen and expand our local innovation ecosystem. We will help create the places where innovation happens: on our own campus, in our city centre innovation district joint venture Sister, and with our partners in Sister, in the manufacturing innovation district in Atom Valley and across the wider region. At the same time, we will leverage our national and international connections to link Manchester with other leading innovation ecosystems, including through our path-breaking partnership with Cambridge. By working together, we will build the environment needed in our region to develop and adopt new ideas at pace and scale.
Have your say
The goal is for innovation to become part of everyday life at Manchester – something everyone contributes to, not something owned by a small group of specialists. Your ideas, energy and experience will help make that vision a reality. By signing up to the beta Unit M digital platform today, you can get involved in our innovation network and directly influence how it evolves to best support you and our community.
Over the coming months, we will develop an innovation delivery plan for the University, setting out key actions for the next three years. In the spirit of innovation, we don’t have all the answers yet, but we know enough to get started. We welcome feedback from colleagues, students and partners on the ideas, big and small, that will help us deliver our ambitions for Manchester to become a powerhouse of innovation.
One question to discuss: How can we all actively contribute to building a more inclusive and impactful innovation ecosystem at Manchester?
We talk as if the university is a kind of mission-driven conglomerate, strategically steering research toward grand challenges. In reality, a modern research university is a platform — closer to Amazon— that lets academics use its infrastructure, reputation and regulatory status to access other people’s money. And that money is mostly public: taxpayer-funded research councils and medical charities whose donors think they’re paying for breakthroughs, not for universities to build ever larger central bureaucracies.
Yet our strategies are written as if the university itself is the originator, investor, and beneficiary. It isn’t. We are intermediaries. When something actually does look commercially promising, we are very quick to invite in private equity and venture capital, who quite reasonably protect their risk by diluting the university’s stake to a rounding error. The pattern is familiar: the university puts in small, high-risk seed funding (and decades of salary, labs, PhDs — all effectively public subsidy), then business walks away with the real upside. Universities then point to the spinout as “impact,” but economically, it’s marginal for us.
So the corporate fantasy goes like this: “We will be a research-intensive university solving the world’s problems.” The operational reality is: “We will be a platform through which publicly funded academics compete for publicly funded grants, while the serious downstream value creation is captured elsewhere.” Which is why I find the 2035-style visions incomplete. If everyone is chasing the same challenge-led funding, we produce conformity, not originality. And if our actual revenue is teaching plus highly competitive public research money, we should admit that the real, defensible business of a university is still teaching, training, and safeguarding fundamental, even esoteric scholarship whose value can’t yet be narrated for a VC deck. Everything else is fashion.