management best practice/small business service

Access to Knowledge

The following related schemes are supported by the DTI:

• PTP (Postgraduate Training Partnerships) - Aimed at increasing the number of high quality postgraduates with skills, experience and training relevant to the needs of industry. Groups of postgraduate students work within a Research and Technology Organisation on industrially relevant research projects supervised jointly by academics and RTO personnel.
  
  
• Faraday Partnerships - The Faraday Partnerships are business-driven knowledge base/industry partnerships recoginsed regionally and nationally as centres of expertise and collaboration in their sectors or technology.

  By bringing together researchers and businesses through the involvement of intermediate organisations and 'technology translators' (business-literate scientists and engineers) they use private capital and the various support schemes more coherently to being new products and processes to the market faster.

• TCS (formerly known as the Teaching Company Scheme) - Facilitates the transfer of technology and knowledge between the science, engineering and technology base and business by enabling high quality graduates to work for two years on projects central to company needs. Now managed by the Small Business Service.

• CBP (College-Business Partnerships) - Based on the same principles as TCS, but primarily involving further education colleges in partnerships with SMEs. Now managed by the Small Business Service.
  
  
• STEP (Shell Technology Enterprise Programme) - A Summer vacation placement scheme for undergraduates to encourage SMEs to consider employing graduates and to provide undergraduates with industrial experience. Now managed by the Small Business Service.