The NETPark Innovation Management Academy: a pilot scheme for professional innovation support for high tech growth companies

The Innovation Management Academy (IMA) is a structured innovation support service available to members of NETPark Net which opens up opportunities to partner with other organisations, teaches best practice in innovation management, and ensures companies have the knowledge to manage open innovation effectively. It was implemented because of the maturing of the open innovation concept globally, the opportunities that brings, the high failure rate of products in the marketplace and the lack of innovation support provided by the private sector in NETParks locality. Run as a pilot for the last 18 months, the IMA has demonstrated NETParks commitment to being a lens through which companies can access opportunities with support, and positions NETPark at the heart of a broad innovation community across County Durham. NETPark is now developing IMA 2.0 incorporating lessons learned from the pilot: retain the extremely high quality of the service while being more flexible in implementation.