Dr. Kevin Cullen, Director of Business Development and Operations at the University of Glasgow has announced details of a unique venture to give 200 small and medium-sized West of Scotland business access to the expertise and knowledge base of the University.

He explains, 'The DIALOGUES project is about developing and communicating opportunities with SMEs to fill an existing market gap. It is designed to pull together all of the key players in economic development (Scottish Enterprise, Local Authority, private sector, NHS, Education) to ensure joined-up thinking across the support networks.'

Having secured £1.2 million to finance the project, Kevin is naturally very enthusiastic about its potential, ' SME's can often be a little cynical about getting involved with universities for various reasons. So we have to go to them to convince them that we can all benefit from working more closely together. This can be achieved through a positive outreach approach.'

The project will recruit four new Business Development Managers (BDMs) and utilise existing expertise in the incubation arm of the project. The BDMs will be distributed across the four arms of the project: one for the research mapping arm; one for the networking arm; and two for the outreach arm.

Suitable companies i.e. those with a high growth potential will be identified through a number of routes including Scottish Enterprise Glasgow (who put up £380k) from its database of 35,000 SMEs. The plan is to find 150 existing and 50 new SMEs to benefit from close working relationships built up over anything from six to eighteen months.

The additional finance has come from the University, Strathclyde European Partnership and Glasgow City Council. Strathclyde University and the NHS have been involved in developing the concept and collaboration with these partners is seen as essential to the longer term success of the approach.

The project will go live early next year and an integral part of the communication package will be a website which is currently being finalised. In the meantime, more information is available at Research and Enterprise

Media Relations Office (media@gla.ac.uk)

DIALOGUES stands for Developing Innovation and Leveraging Opportunities, Glasgow University and Existing SME?s.

For further information, please contact Dr Kevin Cullen or Elizabeth Wray on 0141 330 3866 or the Press Office on 0141 330 3535.

First published: 17 December 2002