Peter Buckley, AMBS's 200th Anniversary Chair in International Business, joins us on our Original Thinking Podcast to talk about the challenges, risks, and future of multinationals.

In our latest Original Thinking filmed podcast Beccy Speight, Chief Executive of the RSPB, joined Professor Paulo Quattrone from Alliance Manchester Business School to discuss how businesses must better encompass Nature in their decision-making and also recognise Nature as an active stakeholder.

In this Original Thinking Podcast, Vlad Jiman, Director of Data at NBrown, discusses how to build a data culture within a large organisation with Professor Panos Constantinides from Alliance Manchester Business School.

What role can corporate sustainability play in terms of business transformation? Zara De Belder, a recent MBA graduate from Alliance Manchester Business School and sustainability expert, joins Claire Binns, Senior Impact Manager at Sykes Holiday Cottages, to discuss the subject. Claire also talks first-hand about the recent steps Sykes Cottages has taken in terms of its specific approach to measuring and assessing its sustainability credentials.

Three years on from the height of the pandemic this podcast hosted by Alliance Manchester Business School explores the lessons learnt from Protect, a major UK government study into the transmission of the Covid-19 virus and the wider UK research programme around Covid-19. Debating the findings of the nationwide study are Professor David Fishwick, Chief Medical Advisor at Health and Safety Executive GB, Sheena Johnson, Professor of Work Psychology and Wellbeing at Alliance Manchester Business School, and Martie Van Tongeren, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health at The University of Manchester.

How do leaders of large organisations and businesses remain agile and nimble when faced with so many day-to-day challenges? Panos Constantinides, Professor of Digital Innovation at Alliance Manchester Business School, and Simon Hayward, Managing Director and Global Lead for Leadership and Culture at Accenture, discuss how change takes place across organisations, and in particular look at how to embark upon digital transformation.

What does it mean to be truly sustainable and how should companies and organisations approach their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies? These were just some of the key topics explored by Sacha Sadan, Director of ESG at the Financial Conduct Authority, and Professor Konstantinos Stathopoulos from Alliance Manchester Business School, at a podcast hosted by Alliance Manchester Business School.

German biotech firm BioNTech became world famous for developing the mRNA-based Covid vaccine with Pfizer. One of the key figures behind the success was Chief Business and Commercial Officer Sean Marett, who took his MBA at AMBS. In our latest Original Thinking live podcast, Sean shares the extraordinary story about how the company turned itself on its head from a business developing cancer treatments to one that rapidly began developing a Covid vaccine. He also talks candidly about how the MBA equipped him with crucial skills that he was able to call upon during the Covid crisis. At our recent Vital Topics lecture Sean admitted that initially his company had no idea if its Covid vaccine was going to work. “We had no idea if anyone was going to buy it even if it worked. We had no supply agreements in place. No global distribution. We had to do all that in 11 months. In the end we actually received approval for the vaccine while we were still scaling up. This meant that 180 countries all wanted our vaccine so we had to decide how to distribute that.” With the immediate Covid crisis over, the company is now renewing its focus on cancer treatments. For instance, in January this year it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK government to test its different technologies in cancer patients in the UK. 

Advances in data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytics are completely changing the way we think about and do business. In our first podcast of 2023, which was also filmed in our new podcast suite, Professor Richard Allmendinger from AMBS and David Walters from North-West based fund manager River Capital joined Chair Jim Pendrill from AMBS to discuss the issue. Richard, who is a Professor of Applied Artificial Intelligence, and also a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, recently joined the advisory board of the North’s first dedicated AI fund run by River Capital. The fund focuses specifically on early-stage, high growth AI, machine learning and data science investment opportunities across the North. David Walters works in the equity team at River Capital as a technology investment director, supporting technology businesses across the region. He has been a CTO at multiple PE-backed companies and has also run AI practices.

This episode will be hosted by Elvira Uyarra, Professor of Innovation Studies at Alliance Manchester Business School. In recent years, and in response to major societal challenges such as climate change, migration, or food and energy security, innovation policy has both broadened its scope for action and widened the goals it is expected to address. This implies a shift from generic and primarily R&D-based innovation support measures towards a new (or third) ‘generation’ of innovation policy - variously referred to as challenge-led, mission-orientated or transformative innovation policies. A more targeted and challenge-oriented innovation policy should, it is argued, help to deliver desired, and not just more, innovations. This implies a more active role of the state in funding risk-taking activities and in creating - not just correcting - markets. Whilst there is much agreement that bolder, more customised and directional policies are needed to tackle the societal challenges of our time, there is less consensus about how such policies should be implemented in practice. Drawing from her personal research journey, Professor Uyarra will discuss the rationales, challenges and particularly the key role of ‘place’ in this new policy agenda. Elvira Uyarra is Professor of Innovation Studies at Alliance Manchester Business School (University of Manchester) where she is also Director of the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research. Her research sits at the intersection between innovation studies, policy studies and regional studies and has in the last few years focused on topics such as the role of universities in regional development, the role of regions in new generation innovation policies and the innovation impacts of public procurement. She has authored more than 40 scholarly articles in leading journals in geography, innovation studies and management, including Research Policy, Technovation, Regional Studies and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Her work has been funded by the UK Research Council, international organisations (such as EU, OECD, IADB), and numerous national and regional bodies internationally. She is a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association (RSA) and editor of the journal Regional Studies. This episode will be facilitated by Philip McCann, Professor of Urban & Regional Economics at Alliance MBS.

Berne Ferry, Head of the National School of Healthcare Science, will deliver this year’s Teddy Chester lecture Into the foreground: The emergence of healthcare science and public consciousness. This annual lecture marks the contribution of Teddy Chester, who was the first professor of social administration at the University of Manchester. From his appointment in the early 1950s, to his retirement in the 1970s he was an influential pioneer in management development, using evidence and research with policy makers, and working with clinical leaders. He was involved in founding and leading the NHS Graduate Training Scheme, and in founding Manchester Business School Into the foreground: The emergence of healthcare science and public consciousness Healthcare science has a long and varied history, encompassing over fifty distinct specialties working in the NHS. Around 55,000 NHS scientists are employed in hospital and community services, some of them working at consultant and director level. Until the advent of the global Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, public perceptions of scientists working in healthcare varied from being non-existent to a vague perception of an individual in a white lab coat, wearing safety glasses and peering through a microscope within the basement of a hospital. COVID-19 increased the visibility of the immensely diverse work of healthcare scientists and allowed patients and NHS colleagues to begin to recognise what a valuable resource the NHS had in this small but integral NHS workforce. Two years on, the perception that fellow NHS professionals and the public now have of NHS scientists and scientists in general has altered irrevocably. Fellow NHS colleagues and NHS patients are not only interested and open to scientists being involved in patient care but genuinely want to engage with the science behind their tests and their treatment. This talk will describe how, in the 2000s, a disparate collection of healthcare sciences was coalesced into a unifying concept that led to the rise of the ‘healthcare scientist’ as a key actor in UK healthcare diagnosis, treatment and innovation. Berne will outline the long and continuing journey that led to the emergence of the profession of healthcare science, give examples of how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this and consider how healthcare science and the need for scientists to step up into NHS leadership roles will develop into the future. Berne Ferry Berne is the Head of the National School of Healthcare Science (NSHCS) in HEE, is an associate fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, UK and visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University. The NSHCS operates as the national deanery for the training of all scientists in the NHS Nationally where Berne has led on the training and education of the healthcare science (HCS) workforce since 2017. This year, Berne was recognised for her work, including leading the continuation of scientific training during the COVID pandemic, by the award of an honorary fellowship of the Institute of Biomedical Science and a Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Healthcare Science from NHS England’s Office the Chief Scientific Officer. This event is facilitated by Ann Mahon, Professor of Health Leadership and Head of the Health Management Group, Alliance MBS.

At this Vital Topics event we will explore how Covid-19 has created opportunities for change across both central and local government, while our panel will also share their thoughts on the need for deeper resilience building as life gradually returns to normal in the wake of the pandemic. Much has been written over the past two years about how the pandemic will create opportunities for transformative change. But where do we stand today, and is that transformative change really likely to happen? At this Vital Topics event we will look at how Covid-19 has created opportunities for change across both central and local government, while our panel will also share their thoughts on the need for deeper resilience building as life gradually returns to normal in the wake of the pandemic. Our speakers will also explore the need for society to better engage with this agenda and at what decision-makers need to be doing to further embed the recovery among local communities. Chaired by Dr Simos Chari, joining us on our panel will be Duncan Shaw, Professor of Operational Research and Critical Systems at Alliance Manchester Business School, Dr Kathy Oldham OBE, Chief Resilience Officer for Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Andy Wright, former Chief Executive at Braintree District Council and Issa Kassis, the Mayor of Ramallah.

In this episode we will hear from Jan Iceton, Chair of Smart Works Greater Manchester. Smart Works Greater Manchester is a truly inspiring charity that has helped over 3,500 unemployed, disadvantaged and often vulnerable women get back into employment. Their motto is “get the clothes, get the confidence, get the job”.... and 72% of their clients do just that. They bounced back quickly after Covid and now deliver circa 100 appointments a month from their centre in Stockport. Now, at this time of exceptional need, they are working towards opening a new Smart Works in Manchester by April 2023. Aside from Smart Works, Jan supports entrepreneurial SaaS platform businesses as an Investor/NED. Jan's whole career has been in business development with 10 years in large corporate IT (Fujitsu), 10 years BPO in the UK and North America (Vertex) then almost 10 years running her own consultancy / interim business supporting private equity owned companies. In 2015, Jan went "back on the payroll" for 2 years when she joined Utiligroup, a fast growing, highly entrepreneurial SaaS provider to independent UK energy suppliers backed by North Edge Capital (PE). In April 2017 they sold the company to ESG for £100m and in November were recognised by the BVCA (Private Equity) as Best Management Team of the Year (Mid Market). Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

In this episode, Professor Duncan Shaw explores how Covid-19 has created opportunities for change across both central and local government. He also shares his thoughts on the need for deeper resilience building as life gradually returns to normal in the wake of the pandemic.

This episode will be hosted by Javed Siddiqui, Professor of Accounting, Alliance Manchester Business School. Pressures from various donor agencies (such as the World Bank), combined with the pursuit of legitimacy by governments in many developing countries, have resulted in various western accounting and corporate governance mechanisms to be exported to the developing world. Accounting researchers have identified the inherent limits to what (western) governance systems can achieve, especially in certain (non-western) contexts, and have often termed these practices as ‘ritualistic’. Drawing from his personal research journey, Professor Javed Siddiqui will discuss the potential policy implications of such research. For example, given the presence of weak capital markets, where investors do not really appreciate the value of a ‘good’ audit, and the reasonable success of various supply chain certification schemes, is there a scope for changing the focus of auditing and governance mechanisms in developing economies (as suggested by the Brydon review)? If so, what is stopping certain forms of change from coming within? Also, given the tendency of governments in developing countries to adopt western governance mechanisms without considering the context, do regulators in western countries need a more cautious approach towards policy development? Javed is a Professor of Accounting at the Alliance Manchester Business School, and the school Director for post-graduate taught (PGT) programmes, responsible for a portfolio of fifteen specialised MSc programmes. Javed joined Manchester Business School as a Lecturer in 2008, and was promoted to a Senior Lecturer in the same school in 2015. His primary fields of research are auditing, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, especially in the context of developing economies. His research has been funded by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) and the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, UK. Professor Siddiqui worked with international development agencies, such as the World Bank and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Big Four accountancy firms, as well as national level professional accountancy bodies. This event will be facilitated by Christopher Humphrey, Professor of Accounting in the Accounting and Finance division of Alliance Manchester Business School. 

In this episode we will hear from Miki Shika, founder of Ekhaya Empowerment Community Interest Company and an entrepreneur with a passion for childcare, families and integration. Miki qualified as a Montessori directress (teacher) almost two decades ago and in that time has mastered her skills in childcare and community engagement with a specialised focus on children, working on the needs of pre-primary school aged children. She has managed nurseries and currently runs a childcare business. Miki originates from South Africa where her interests in education and child development were spurred. Her community engagement work was born out of her identification amongst displaced groups and her commitment to activism. She founded Ekhaya Empowerment C.I.C, an organisation which works with women and children from communities experiencing a range of social injustices. Hosted by MBA alumna Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development.

The Scale-Up Forum is a peer-to-peer network for ambitious scaling up businesses in Greater Manchester. It gives businesses at all stages of the scale up journey the opportunity to share experiences, challenges and lessons learnt for mutual business benefit. Launched in 2018, it provides a platform for businesses in the scale up phase to gain insight from their peers and from academic experts on challenges experienced by business growing at pace, whatever their sector. The Forum is managed and delivered by our Business Engagement and Knowledge Exchange team, who help to identify routes for mutually-beneficial collaboration between our academic researchers and business partners. Our quarterly events are all based around themes proposed by the partner firms. Achieving Innovation and incorporating innovation strategies How have large and growing organisations successfully embedded innovation strategies to deliver success? We will hear an academic perspective presenting past research into this area along with a practitioner perspective. As per the usual format the session will encourage interaction and shared learning, starting discussion points include “Should innovation be tasked to specialist teams within a business or is it everyone's responsibility? How should businesses plan their strategy and decision-making process to facilitate innovation?”. Speakers Bruce Tether Bruce Tether is Professor of Innovation Management and Strategy, Associate Head of Research for the Innovation Management and Policy Division, and the Research Director of the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre led by Nesta in London. He teaches innovation management and his research interests centre around three inter-related themes: Innovation and entrepreneurship through creativity and design.The competitive dynamics of professional service firms, especially those oriented to design and creativity, such as architecture practices, design and engineering consultancies.How firms make choices regarding their geographical locations for competitive advantage. Azhar Quaiyoom Azhar is the director and CEO of QSustain, an independent award-winning specialist consultancy to the construction industry offering strategic support across many sectors. Azhar is a highly motivated and charismatic entrepreneur and Engineering professional with 20 years’ experience within sustainable design and delivery across different sectors such as mix use, commercial, and in particular, rail, creating first of its kind achievements across complex projects. This is coupled with invaluable experience in practical major programmes with extensive knowledge of the feasibility, design and implementation stages. With this experience, Azhar now runs a successful consultancy that is well placed to expand and diversify. Azhar has a rare and exclusive combination of Engineering design, sustainability and practical project management experience with knowledge of how to implement low carbon and sustainable developments from concept, design, and procurement to construction and operation. The Scale-Up Forum is sponsored by Bruntwood Works