Original Thinking Podcast

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.