Added by Anne Gwinnett, Chair of Distinct steering group, February 2012
As Spring approaches it is a good time to take stock, celebrate, and ponder the challenges ahead. With that in mind, I’ve given some thought to what successes we’ve had and challenges we’ve faced at Distinct so far, and what’s coming up in 2012.
Our research is now well on the way to completion. Our case studies of both HE institutions and organisations outside the HE sector are on track for publication in early 2012. Outputs from our research on communications and stakeholder engagement with the three partner institutions (Oxford Brookes, Bournemouth and Bradford) will be ready soon after, and our research on leadership, and the work that we are doing to create more bespoke tools for the sector, will continue over the next few months.
We’ve engaged in debate around distinctiveness across the sector, and this has been both positive and a cause for reflection. Our session at CASE’s annual conference was very well attended, and provoked a lot of interesting debate about the nature of distinctiveness, and the challenges of arriving at a distinctive identity within a crowded sector. The questions and comments since, through blog discussions and articles published, have shown that there is further debate needed around what ‘brand’ and ‘marketing’ do and don’t mean. We welcome this at Distinct; we recognise that for some in HE these concepts can represent an unwelcome marketisation or commercialisation of the sector. In our view, in the increasingly challenging HE context, HEIs ignore these concepts at their peril: in these times of increasing competition, we believe that utilising these concepts effectively is essential for an institution’s survival.
As Professor Sir David Watson pointed out in his presidential address at the SRHE conference in December, universities are being asked to be more business-like. That said, we don’t want to lose the characteristics that constitute academic institutions’ strengths, and we believe that the culture of collegiality, with all the benefits that this brings, can exist alongside a more managerial approach - and that it is possible to have the best of both worlds.
In our session at SRHE we focused on the nature of distinctiveness. Being distinctive is not about being unique, it is about being identifiable. It is about the combination of characteristics that enables people to readily identify what you stand for and what makes your institution one with which they want to associate. We reflected on the fact that a critical success factor is finding an expression of identity that works both internally and externally – one that communicates the nature of the organisation well and encourages a sense of pride in being associated with it; and of course we talked about what might be seen as essential elements of a successful distinctiveness strategy.
In 2012, we’re looking forward to further opportunities to engage in debate on these topics. In March we will be hosting a plenary at the CIM HE annual conference, focused on a debate around how distinctiveness can really work in an institution. On 12 June, as the project approaches its formal end point, we will be hosting a high profile conference, jointly with CASE. We will also be publishing our final resources for the sector.
We hope you will be able to join us at one or more of our events, and we look forward to working with you in 2012.
To sign up to Distinct’s e-bulletin, in order to receive further information on the project and its conference, please visit www.distinct.ac.uk or email contact@distinct.ac.uk.
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