COVID, carbon fibre and crime: how innovation is changing the world
Infinitely Curious
Reading time: 10 minutes
‘Innovation’. It’s a word that can sound pretty abstract. Evoking images of science labs, tech workshops and conference halls. But innovation is shaping and reshaping the world around us every single day. And at The University of Warwick, we’re collaborating with businesses of all kinds to create change that benefits everyone.
How you’re treated in hospital. How much you pay for a carbon fibre tennis racket. How your used baked bean tins are recycled. How criminals are brought to justice if your family is struck by tragedy. These are all elements of life, in its everyday and extreme, that are evolving through our research partnerships in business and manufacturing. We’re ever-curious for new ways to change lives for the better.
Saving lives with a nudge
In early 2020, the world was gripped by a new disease.
In a matter of weeks, COVID-19 had swept the globe. And it was staggering to think that we could put our loved ones’ lives at risk simply by being near them. That a hug could expose them to the agony of coronavirus.
As we faced a life of lockdown and isolation, simple social contact became a life or death issue.
But, it turns out, the little things can make all the difference.
Remember singing ‘Happy Birthday’ as you washed your hands? Or coughing into the crook of your arm?
This is behavioural science in action. Tackling a health crisis not just with medical resources, but also with messages designed to affect public behaviour. Encouragement to take simple steps that can make a huge difference.
Otherwise known as ‘nudges’.
“We have strongly encouraged policymakers to make sure that behavioural science is embedded into all elements of the national COVID-19 response.”
Says Warwick’s Professor Ivo Vlaev, who has worked closely with the Behavioural Insights Team – or ‘Nudge Unit’ - previously part of governments' The Cabinet Office.
The Nudge Unit was born in 2010, using behavioural tactics to encourage us to do things like pay our car tax on time or register for organ donation. But the pandemic saw it, and Professor Vlaev’s team, mount a huge effort to support the NHS.
“We have given rapid advice to tailor guidance communications and policies,” he continues. “This draws on evidence about how people actually behave to make public interventions more effective.”
And it’s a strategy that has continued to make a difference as COVID subsided. The range of initiatives has included using social influencers to drive vaccine take-up in the under 29s. There has also been the development of a wellbeing platform with the BBC, designed to support “the public in making responsible decisions and…reduce the background ‘non-COVID-19’ demands on the NHS.”
Patient care, the Toyota way
The pandemic also provided a stern test for another Warwick-led innovation.
In 2018, Dr Nicola Burgess set out on a bold mission: the “most ambitious experiment in organisation-wide improvement in the history of the NHS.”
Dr Burgess and the team from Warwick Business School collaborated with the NHS and the Virginia Mason Institute (VMI) from the USA, to develop a new system of quality improvement (QI) across five NHS Trusts.
Her inspiration? The Toyota production line.
Applying principles from the car giant’s revolutionary lean production system, Dr Burgess and her team spent five years moulding a more efficient and considerate approach to patient care.
“We know that culture doesn’t change in a day, but it can and does happen with focused activity that seeks to embed a shared set of values that are clear, concise, constant and meaningful to everyone.”
The team used Toyota’s model of continuous improvement to establish new ways of talking, learning and working across the Trusts. Including daily huddles and training programmes, as well as providing leaders with new ways to inspire their teams.
“When a leader frames a problem,” says Dr Burgess, “they give permission for employees to lead improvement from the front line.”
So when COVID-19 struck in 2020, these new approaches faced an unexpected and highly demanding test.
Dr Burgess shares a quote from an NHS non-executive director, describing how the new QI methods delivered invaluable focus and efficiency at a time of extreme anxiety.
"The daily huddle at eight o’clock in the morning really sets the tone so we know who’s doing what … and there’s no duplication of effort … everybody knows what their role is in that incident room."
The reinvention of
NASA
While many of the innovations that transform healthcare start in the heat of the front line, others are born miles above the Earth’s surface.
Whether it’s breakthroughs in patient care or new recycling systems, so many things that make our lives better start off as space technology.
But who’s leading it?
Would your first answer be NASA? A cutting-edge, ultra-modern organisation. The undisputed leader in their field.
Not in the eyes of one Warwick Professor.
There was a clear “urgency for change,” says Loizos Heracleous, Professor of Strategy at Warwick Business School (WBS).
When he began working with NASA, he found an organisation in danger of being eclipsed by a thriving commercial space industry.
SpaceX is pioneering passenger spaceflight, while Jeff Bazos explores manufacturing on the lunar surface – just two examples of the new generation of ‘astropreneurs’ fired up for fresh opportunities beyond our atmosphere.
“If NASA did not adapt, it would not be relevant.”
In the face of this breathtaking change, the Professor went to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and challenged the NASA team to explore a radical new approach he calls a ‘commercial network model’.
Through a five-year series of workshops, the aim has been to revolutionise NASA’s working practices to become ‘ambidextrous’. “What that means is being an organisation that can balance very effective innovation with high levels of efficiency.”
In other words, doing it better and cheaper.
Key to this is breaking down the barriers between government and business. Encouraging relationships with commercial partners to share new innovations, drive new thinking and power forward mutual progress.
After all, says Professor Heracleous, “sometimes a friendly challenger can help companies ask the right questions.”
He describes how the Warwick team have instilled a model for long-term growth by “creating capabilities in the client organisation, so they can continue to help themselves.”
This new approach gives NASA more freedom to concentrate on its primary mission of deep space exploration, while supporting firms with the commercial opportunities of low Earth orbit.
Professor Heracleous says, “I see it as the responsibility of academics to try and share some of their insights with practitioners and leaders of industry”. But this isn’t just about making billionaires and shareholders even richer. Ultimately, this is about changes that will help all of us down here on Earth.
“I see it as the responsibility of academics to try and share some of their insights with practitioners and leaders of industry”
Going full throttle for greener carbon fibre
When it comes to the planet, another Warwick team have been working with industry on a radical way to help protect our valuable resources and make carbon fibre more affordable in the things we buy every day.
Professor Kerry Kirwan wanted to build a racing car out of rubbish.
Part of WMG, a division of the University dedicated to exploring science, technology and engineering with the public and private sectors, Professor Kirwan had a vision of a ‘green’ racing car. A machine engineered with recycled materials able to handle the high speeds and extreme tensions of the track.
“Carbon fibre materials looked interesting and had lots of potential, but only if they could be developed to overcome their environmental impact.”
But this wasn’t just about racing cars. Carbon fibre is used in everything from jumbo jets to tennis rackets. It’s an important carbon-reducing element of many vehicles. The downside? Its production and disposal has a far greater environmental impact than any metal.
40%
Of carbon fibre goes to landfill
By developing an F3 racing car, the Warwick team were aiming to stretch the capabilities of recycled carbon fibre for a whole range of real world applications.
Professor Kirwan and his team collaborated with a commercial partner, Gen2Carbon.
“We went through a lot of chemistry formulations, processing developments and physical testing.”
And after intensive hours of lab work and component engineering, the racing-car-from-rubbish was born.
Professor Kirwan continues, “The company has now commercialised different materials for different applications and there is much reduced environmental footprint attached to the recycled materials compared to the virgin materials where it is used.” Even better, the project saw the beginning of a whole new supply chain dedicated to reclaiming carbon fibre.
And all as the result of collaboration by passionate, visionary and commercially aware teams. “Our cross-disciplinary abilities in materials, chemistry, processing, engineering [and] design allowed us to bring those materials through the different technology readiness levels to commercialisation. There aren’t many places that can do the whole span in one place.”
Watch Kerry Kirwan talking about his work
Fighting crime with 3D Scanning
While Professor Kirwan aims to protect our future with innovative technology, another researcher is using it to shed light on the past – and help to find justice in the face of tragedy.
“It was one phone call, one day, that changed my life.”
Professor Mark Williams never saw himself as a crime fighter. At WMG, his speciality has always been image processing and 3D technologies. And like many of us, his only experience of detective work had come via page-turning thrillers or TV shows.
But when West Midlands Police called in 2014, he didn’t hesitate.
Tragically, the police had recovered a body from a canal in the region. The victim had been dismembered and placed in a suitcase. Professor Williams and his team were tasked with using state-of-the-art 3D technologies to support the forensic investigation.
“By applying high-resolution 3D scans of burnt human bone,” he says, “we were able to help provide a crucial link between the site where the body had been disposed of and the home of the murder suspect – leading in part to a murder conviction.”
This case was just the beginning. Since then, the Professor says, “our novel image processing methods and 3D visualisation techniques have provided police investigators with a powerful new tool for uncovering and evidencing crime.”
His research is improving the quality of evidence in homicide investigations across the country. Furthering the field of forensic science, inspiring other academics, and forging crucial bonds with organisations such as the Forensic Centre for Digital Scanning and 3D Printing. Most importantly, this work has led to many convictions, bringing victims and their families the justice they so desperately deserve.
Making life
better for
care leavers
Sometimes innovation comes not from science or data, but from listening to those at the heart of an issue.
“I had a difficult childhood…I was frequently excluded from school.”
Growing up in care was far from easy for CJ Hamilton. And like so many others, he faced the start of his adult life feeling vulnerable.
There are
40,000
care leavers in the UK
Without the support of a stable home, it’s so easy for the future to look uncertain.
Who can you turn to for guidance? How can you build your sense of self-worth if you feel powerless?
It’s no wonder so many in this situation struggle to find direction in life.
The fact is, those leaving a residential children’s home are more likely to have a conviction, become a young parent, or experience mental health issues than their peers in more stable homes.
“If I am anything to go by,” says CJ, “the local authorities and charities supporting care leavers’ transition to adulthood should definitely be focusing on psychological and emotional outcomes.”
Through ambition and determination, CJ has worked hard to pursue his education. Specialising in care and social sciences, he has a passion to help those starting out in life as he did.
Now, he’s working with The University of Warwick to shape the destiny of youngsters leaving care.
CJ is a Research Associate taking part in the EXploring Innovation in Transition (EXIT) Study. The project, led by Graeme Currie, Professor of Public Management, uses the experience of CJ and others like him to develop pilot schemes that improve opportunities for care leavers.
It’s an ongoing project, but EXIT is making strides by combining real life insight with data analysis to deliver practical, sustainable solutions.
“The question that the EXIT study poses,” says CJ, “is how do we scale up some of these innovative pilot schemes for care leavers? Only when we do, can we finally improve the social capital of care-experienced young people, and thus, their chances in life.”
The economics of happiness
Warwick's curiosity-driven innovation is making a real world difference to so many people in so many ways. But what about the most abstract measure of success?
Professor Andrew Oswald, of the Department of Economics, has spent decades trying to answer an age-old question.
Does money buy you happiness?
Happiness, he says “is a simple emotional state characterised by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfilment, but also one that is complex, and often elusive.”
It turns out, there was already information available. Mining barely-touched data from 1992, Professor Oswald and his team dove in “to see if any patterns were visible within this emotional enigma.”
This three-decade-old data inspired a radical new approach. Traditionally, societal progress and economic growth have been measured through Gross Domestic Product. But, Professor Oswald argued, we also needed to consider deeper metrics, such as happiness and wellbeing.
It wasn’t easy.
“I faced some hostility and indifference from economists and others who were critical of the ‘unconventional’ approach.”
Plus, the team struggled with swathes of data stored on archaic computer systems. But with the support of The University of Warwick, they’ve successfully introduced a new set of metrics employed by the Office for National Statistics and many others, while their findings have been used in policy documents across the world.
And some of those findings are pretty startling.
Did you know that getting married adds up to the same amount of happiness, on average, as having an extra £70,000 salary per year? And, the 'midlife crisis' is real - and exists across the world?
It’s been a struggle at times, but Professor Oswald is certain his breakthroughs have been made possible by the Infinitely Curious spirit of The University of Warwick.
They “recognised the value and difference our research could make, even when we were exploring often experimental or abstract approaches, they provided the platform for us to progress.”
Bold innovation, Infinite Curiosity.
The way your loved ones are cared for in hospital. The racket you choose for a game of tennis. The speed with which criminals are brought to justice. The choice to be registered for organ donation. All these, and so much, are the result of Warwick researchers opening up new opportunities for business and industry. Abstract ‘what-if?’ thinking leading to bold innovations that filter down to benefit everyone.
Because the best research doesn’t exist in a bubble. Just like every business, we’re here to make a positive impact on the real world. Working with enterprises to turn our Infinite Curiosity into life-enhancing innovations.
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