Innovation in Place

Through innovation, we can create a fairer society across geographies and groups, and in particular places and spaces. Where innovation happens matters – it can change quality of life. By taking development to targeted regions, and understanding their unique challenges and potential, we can enable socio-economic flourishing.

We work in isolated rural communities and areas of poverty, to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems; with the NHS, UK and international governments, Local Enterprise Partnerships, present and future leaders; and drive change in connectivity infrastructures, support natural disaster response, and promote compassionate leadership.

Over almost 25 years, we have worked with SMEs in the North West of England and beyond, building a strong reputation for improving productivity and leadership, and develop new sustainable practices and skills. 

Compassionate leadership in the NHS

Professor Michael West CBE has worked with the NHS for more than a decade, transforming leadership and cultures across the healthcare sector in England to deliver high-quality, compassionate patient care.

Find out more about how Professor West’s work has helped improve the wellbeing of NHS staff.

Mobile Access North Yorkshire (MANY)

The MANY project tackles the socio-economic digital divide in rural communities in North Yorkshire. LUMS worked alongside national and local government and IT service providers to help individuals and organisations benefit from 5G connectivity.

Discover how the MANY team engaged with the local community, and why it is important their voices and concerns were heard as part of the 5G network development.

Mobile Access North Yorkshire

Alternative Entrepreneurship

The favelas of Rio de Janeiro are often associated by outsiders with poverty and crime. Yet entrepreneurs in these areas have drawn in tourists, and provide examples of how people can use entrepreneurship to help them overcome poverty and social exclusion.

Entrepreneurship in Rio's Favelas

Find out more about Dr Josiane Fernandes’ trips to Rio’s favelas and see how they inspired her research.

Transcript for Entrepreneurship in Rio's Favelas

I'm Josi. I am originally from Brazil, and I'm a Marketing Lecturer here in LUMS.

Broadly speaking, I research markets, how markets are made, why they work the way they do. And in the past six years, I've been researching Brazilian favelas and the tourist market in Brazilian favelas, specifically.

Thinking of these grand challenges that we have nowadays, you know, poverty, inequality, climate change. These things really require that we ask new questions and find new answers to some of these great problems that we have, and I thought, what better place to go than actually talking to people who are going through some of these great struggles. It's completely detached from our everyday realities, completely detached from my reality.

So favelas are a very interesting setting to look at entrepreneurial work. Because of the social exclusion and spatial exclusion really of favelas in Rio, people there need to find a way to make a living. And so they get very creative and they use whatever resources they have available simply because there isn't much available, they can't really rely on the typical institutions that people in formal markets can rely on. So they don't have public safety, they don't have basic infrastructure, you know, things that we take for granted in formal markets are not present in a favela.

So when you go there, you get to actually witness how people make a living and how do they survive in a context where they are deemed by the outside people, people from the city, from other places, as criminals. They're bundled as criminals, you know, they're bundled as people who are not interested in hard work, who are lazy. They're really stigmatised.

I think it's important that we bring insights from different places and we really provide a rich experience and a richness of discussion to our students. And then going to these different places and talking to different people who are living different lives, I think it really brings that to the classroom and helps students widen their perspective on things and be critical of some of the things that are out there.

I don't think I have words to describe how impactful that experience was for me because, as with any research, you go to the field thinking you're going to find something, you have some assumptions about what you're going to find, and then it completely takes its own shape and the research is something that is kind of alive. So it kind of follows its own thing you are just following it around.

It's shaped my interest, my research interest really, because I went to the field thinking I was interested in some things and I ended up being interested in other things. So at the same time that I was there interacting with them my research was being shaped by that experience as I went along.

Clean Water in Africa

Water sustains communities, provides the means for energy generation, sewage disposal and food production. In Africa, clean water is an invaluable and sometimes scarce resource. Research can be put to practical use to solve circular water supply challenges.

Professor Lola Dada shows how the RECIRCULATE project brings together researchers and scientists from the UK and Africa to address clean water problems.

RECIRCULATE

Medical Supply Chains

Ensuring availability of medicines, vaccines and medical equipment is a key societal challenge. Helping health services and suppliers develop strategies to address issues around supply and demand, to prevent shortages and supply chain disruption during crises is essential.

Medicine Supply Chains

Dr Kostas Selviaridis explains how the international MIA – Measures for Improved Availability of medicines and vaccines project works to sustainably reduce shortages of medicines and vaccines.

SME and the NHS

Dr Kostas Selviaridis and Professor Martin Spring describe how their analysis of the Academic Health Science Networks and the Small Business Research Imitative (SBRI) Healthcare helps ensure these projects are working to benefit NHS England and SMEs.

Family Businesses

Family businesses make a major contribution to communities and economies. They are the dominant global business form, and provide lessons and examples for companies the world over.

Financial Reporting Regulations

Financial markets are evolving constantly. Investors, regulators and other stakeholders are turning towards automation to help them with their work – and research from LUMS and Lancaster University’s School of Computing and Communications, and ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science is providing the means to better analyse financial reports, and identify areas of interest and concern, from value creation to corporate misconduct to modern slavery reporting.

Professor Steve Young explains how his work informs and impacts UK regulators.

AI in Professional Services Firms

Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a vision in the future – for many firms it is already here. How it impacts on businesses and individuals depends on how it is applied and where. Through the Next Generation Professional Services project, Lancaster researchers are analysing practice and helping companies travel in the right direction.

Professor Martin Spring talks us through his work with Professor James Faulconbridge on law and accounting firms, the impacts of Artificial Intelligence, and where AI can be best applied.