How can we foster collaborative innovation across design, fashion SMEs and academic research? In today’s fast changing business landscape the capacity of SMEs to prosper in the fashion and textile industry is strongly tied to their ability to continuously innovate. In particular, embracing the open innovation approach, it is strategic for SMEs to understand how they can link with fashion design and academic research. Indeed, the collaborative innovation emerging from fusing fashion business needs, design thinking and creative research investigation is a fundamental driver to think differently and explore new business models in fashion and textiles sector.

The Arts&Innovation Discourse proposes a roundtable discussing FIREup  (Fashion, Innovation, Research, and Enterprise). This is a pilot project that has opened up a dynamic creative space for collaboration between UK designer fashion SMEs and academic researchers in order to catalyse innovation, bring research closer to the industry and stimulate sustainable business growth for the UK designer fashion sector. This project offers the opportunity to explore how the synergy among design, business and research can inspire new innovative sustainable business models for typical micro and small enterprises in the fashion and textile design sector.

Round table

Moderator:
Professor Giovanni Schiuma, Director, Innovation Insights Hub

Speakers:
Professor Sandy Black, Principal Investigator for FIREup
Professor Rebecca Early, Co Investigator
Alex McIntosh, Researcher
Dr Kate Goldsworthy, Researcher
Gabrielle Miller, Research Assistant