So, we are no longer the Centre for Research in Innovation Management (CENTRIM). We are now The Centre for Change, Enterprise and Innovation Management. So, we were CENTRIM> And now we are… er, CENTRIM.
Same acronym, new name, and also new possibilities. In terms of membership we are much bigger. We now have a very clear brief to maintain our status as a CORE (A Centre of Research Excellence.
Sometimes change is circular. CENTRIM has a change of time (with the same acronym, and is back at Brighton Business School’s Mithras House.
Going back can also mean going forward. Moving to our new space is creating new conversations and impulses. We were very focused on innovation management in our history and though that is still at the heart of what many of our researcher team do, we have expanding in to becoming a Centre of Research Excellence (known as a CORE) and now also embrace Change and Enterprise (themes which were, and are, often part of our innovation management research.
Members of the “old” CENTRIM team are now closer to the teaching body at the Businsess School. The team were often involved in teaching where our expertise could enhance the content of many courses, a undergraduate and postgraduate level. Added to this are supervisions of student projects and the potential to link up with staff members who are engaging in research that joins up innovation, change and enterprise.
Our new space looks out over the Lewes Road, with traffic going by all the time. It also gives us all an opportunity to watch the new buildings going up and site redevelopment taking place.
I’ve noticed my attachment to the old name. We were CENTRIM for over 20 years. And yet I am also very excited about the new name. Innovation is about novel ideas; it is about the new. Yet it is also about bring the best of the old and incorporating it into the new. Change is uncertain. Change can be frightening. It can take you out of your comfort zone. Yet is also creates the opportunity to generate new ideas, new practice, and new value. So I am looking forward to being the new version of CENTRIM.
There will be dialogue about what we are, and what we want to be. Critical to this is being in dialogue with the world outside of use, being responsive. One of our founder leaders, Professor John Bessant, described a key element of successful innovation being the ability to sense opprotunity and need outside and to adapt and re-organise internally in order to innovate effectively. That can be a challenge when you get set in your ways. The new CENTRIM has a lot of #’new blood’, – new people coming in with their own ideas, their own research experience and knowledge. The dialogue will be create and; deliberately, not always easy. I look forward to that. CENTRIM will need to walk its own talk about innovation.
Paul Levy, Senior Lecturer
