Roy's pioneering work on open innovation featured in The Times

Agency of the Future co-founder Roy Sandbach was recently profiled in The Times for his role in developing an open innovation system to drive economic growth in the North East.

"Bring us your problems and we will solve them."

That's the message from Professor Roy Sandbach of Newcastle University Business School - who is aiming to raise his native North East to centre stage in the world of open innovation, writes Mike Cowley in The Times on Thursday September 5th, 2013

It seems unusual, to say the least, that the scientist behind Lenor and Fairy Bio might be about to help the North East clean up in the global world of innovation. But Stockton-born Roy Sandbach, currently the David Goldman visiting professor of innovation and enterprise at Newcastle University Business School, has joined up with the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to do just that.

The former research and development (R&D) leader at Procter & Gamble is one of the world's chief authorities on open innovation, seen as a key plank in the North East Economic Review.

Professor Sandbach will pick up and run with the Economic Review recommendations laid out by Will Hutton, chairman of the Big Innovation Centre and principle of Hertford College, Oxford, and turn this into a cohesive innovation strategy.

He is already constructing a high-profile international innovation board, many of its members coming from within the multinational arena which he knows well, with the objective of opening up significant opportunities for the North East.

A Key part of Professor Sandbach's vision is of innovation hubs running throughout the North East: specialist centres, with universities, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and agencies working collaboratively, and to which some of the world's biggest companies will come for solutions - and pay for them.

The full article can be found in The Times Business Insight magazine from Thursday September 5th, 2013.