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Business Development Unit, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University --- "Mining university resources - Business Development Unit, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University" [2007] MonashBusRw 14; (2007) 3(1) Monash Business Review 9

Mining university resources

In highly competitive global markets, competitive advantage is built on superior knowledge, advanced capability and constant innovation.

That might sound like an extract from a ‘Management 101’ text, yet many businesses do not take advantage of one of the key sources of knowledge and innovative thought available to them: our universities. Here is a resource with a wealth of clever, innovative and often brilliant thinkers which so many businesses do not mine.

Monash University made a strategic choice to reach out to the world when it was set up nearly 50 years ago. While the university strives for excellence in research outcomes – a condition often associated with localised, intensive work – a distinctive feature of Monash was its choice to achieve excellence in research and education through a cross-disciplinary, multi-campus, multi-nation approach. This is consistent with most major business organisations and means that this resource is available on a global footprint.

Monash actively engages with companies, professional firms, governments and community organisations to help them build their competencies and capabilities, by applying the university’s knowledge and expertise in a wide range of research activities. To some organisations, the option of ‘collaborative research’ is either not on their radar or, at least, not fully understood. It is actually a quite simple proposition: what are the questions to which you would love to know the answer? Put another way, what knowledge or market intelligence would give you a strong competitive advantage if you had exclusive or early access to it? The task and skill of the researcher is to provide the best answers available, objectively and reliably. Sometimes there is even a bonus because grant programs may contribute funds towards collaborative research projects.

The work readiness of graduate recruits, including their skills in teamwork, communication, analysis and lateral thinking, is another important contributor to an organisation’s competitive advantage. Monash works with major companies and professional firms to develop student internship programs which provide hands-on work experience and the opportunity for firms to get first-hand experience of Monash graduates. Our business courses are constantly reviewed with external partners to identify ways in which work-ready skills might be enhanced. To give you some idea of how rich this resource is, the Monash Graduate School of Business (GSB) was recently reaffirmed as one of the top MBA providers in the world following the release of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2006 rankings. The Monash MBA was placed third in the world in the category ‘Personal development and educational experience’. Overall it was ranked 49th in the world, the highest ranked MBA in Australia and up 10 places from 2005.

Try exploring the riches of knowledge and expertise within our top universities. There’s every chance you will find resources that will be of great value to your organisation.

Business Development Unit, Faculty of Business and Economics

Monash University

Email: Business.Development@buseco.monash.edu.au

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