At BT the idea of 'starting them young' is becoming a mantra through the company's diverse range of research sponsorship programmes and summer placements, which are attracting the best and brightest university students to boost BT’s innovation and research processes.
A recent example is Xiaoxiao Yan who is one of a small group of world class students that have received research sponsorship from BT in recent years.
A year spent observing a small business start-up selling second-hand laptops might seem a surprising topic for a social anthropology student researching her PHD. In fact, the subject company was based in Beijing and used broadband as its primary business tool, in a country with soaring internet use and one of the fastest growing national economies in the world.
It proved to be an inspired choice of study and location, which generated some truly significant research results. That is the conclusion of Jeff Patmore, head of strategic university research at BT Group, who believes it is this kind of inspirational and original student thinking that can bring significant benefits to BT.
He says: "Xiaoxiao was studying the cultural impact of broadband in China and it gave us a fantastic insight into the impact of the enormous growth in internet use. She is an incredibly bright student, studying at Cambridge University, and we had some shared areas of interest in terms of research, so we provided some sponsorship for her PHD. The research in Beijing was first class work, the insight it gave us was both valuable and actionable."
Postgraduate research sponsorship is just one aspect of BT's student programme, but it provides an extremely valuable contribution to BT’s knowledge pool. Patmore explains: "We select very carefully a small number of postgraduate students to sponsor, or engage with, as part of their research studies. A PHD student has to do something unique to complete their PHD, so by virtue of this they will break new ground and make significant discoveries. We do get really first class research from that."
An older and numerically more significant aspect of BT's student sponsorship is the placement programme, through which 30 to 40 leading undergraduate students will spend each summer with BT's research areas.
The students work on a small piece of research during their stint and also benefit from working with BT's experienced teams. While students can apply to this scheme, the universities that have a formal relationship with BT, such as Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, will also recommend shining stars.
In terms of research projects, BT has provided funding for specific studies, including Turning Innovation into Value and Dynamics of Networked Innovation. One study, Distributed Working at BT, looked at the relationship between different forms of communication and virtual working, interviewing hundreds of BT employees to assess the best approach to virtual projects.
Judge Business School also participated in a new BT programme called Partner Vision, which takes senior executives at BT's key system integration partners to meet with leading academics to talk about strategic business challenges.
According to Mary Compton at BT: "Judge Business School helped make the event a great success through being innovative and supportive, providing very good academic material and selecting interesting and credible speakers."
The partnership operates at all levels across BT. For example, leading academics brought in by Judge Business School have worked with BT’s senior management on areas such as managing risk within a complex portfolio of services, achieving value from innovation, and corporate strategy in telecommunications markets.
While BT has already established itself as a centre for innovation, the intellectual challenge delivered by some of the leading experts at Judge Business School has enabled BT's innovators to broaden their thinking and to formulate stronger long-term strategies, as well as fostering ideas around improving product development, customer service and competitive dynamism. As with all successful partnerships, the sum of this relationship is even greater than its constituent parts.