The Higher Education Commission (HEC), in collaboration with the British Council, organised training and awareness activities under the new initiative of Knowledge Exchange Programme. The weeklong training activities targeted the knowledge exchange core team from the HEC, knowledge exchange support team from universities’ office of research, innovation and commercialisation as well as vice chancellors/rectors of public and private universities from all over Pakistan. The main purpose of the whole exercise was to familiarise the universities with the knowledge exchange concept which covers all activities dealing with exchange of information or knowledge from a university to students, business, government and local community.
Knowledge exchange is not simply about commercialisation of science through creation of spin offs, licences etc. It stands for a broader vision and refers to facilitating knowledge/research exploitation, process, skills and human capital development, community/public engagement, enterprise education and entrepreneurship, exploiting the university’s physical assets. The activities focused on the Knowledge Exchange Programme and preparation of survey for mapping and tracking activities related to the knowledge exchange in the universities. Adrian from Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) was the resource person for the training sessions. He has been involved for a long time in developing measuring and mapping of knowledge exchange in UK’s higher education institutions.
