The social sciences have a great deal to offer businesses – from understanding the potential for new goods, services and business models to improving relationships with providers, customers and employees.
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) only supports research activity that:
- meets our excellence criterion
- is developed to ensure the highest chances of making impact
- is provided for independent investigation.
Research we support
The research we support is as follows:
- 24 research organisations hold Impact Acceleration Accounts enabling them to be more responsive to collaboration opportunities
- we support Knowledge Transfer Partnerships to develop relationships between academia and business through collaborative projects that address business needs
- our Business and Local Government Data Research Centres (takes you to the University of Essex website) make data routinely collected by businesses accessible to research for the mutual benefit of business data owners and researchers, in a way that safeguards individuals’ identities
- our research priority area on productivity aims to answer outstanding questions that government and businesses have on how to solve the UK’s productivity puzzle
- our Innovation Caucus is a network of 66 academics engaged in innovation research – it promotes greater collaboration between social science and businesses and has created a ’How ready are you for business model innovation’ online tool (takes you to the Innovation Caucus website) to assess a company’s readiness for business model innovation
- under the National Productivity Investment Fund we are supporting early career researchers to engage with businesses – these projects are examples of the range of benefits that collaboration with the social sciences can bring to business
- our list of collaboration opportunities shows the range of ways that social science insights can help the public, private and third sectors.
Created by the National Centre for Universities and Business in partnership with UKRI, konfer is an online tool that helps businesses find opportunities for collaboration including research, researchers, facilities, equipment, funding and support.
The UKRI Challenge Fund aims to bring together the UK’s world-leading research with business to meet the major industrial and societal challenges of our time.