HighWire is a Doctoral Training Centre (DTC), located at Lancaster University, funded through the RCUK Digital Economy programme via a grant of just over £5.9m, which supports the training of 50 PhD students over a five-year period.

The aim of the overall Digital Economy programme is to investigate the novel design or use of information and communication technologies to help transform the lives of individuals, society or business. This is a fundamentally multi-disciplinary challenge, requiring input from areas including, but not limited to, the arts and humanities, economic and social scientists, medical sciences, in addition to computing, engineering and physical sciences, with the potential to have radical impact on many sectors (for example, transport, healthcare and the creative industries) and societal concerns (for example, quality of life, social and digital inclusion and sustainability).

The focus of HighWire is on innovation as it relates to the Digital Economy. In addressing digital innovation, the DTC aims to go beyond traditional multidisciplinary approaches by seeking a creative fusion between three key disciplines, namely computer science, management and design. The emphasis is on producing a new breed of innovative people who understand and are able to advance the state of the art in technical, design and business innovation: innovative people prepared to work in challenging roles in organisations and ready to drive radical change in the digital economy.

The emphasis throughout the programme is on the overlap between the three disciplines. We seek to produce individuals who will inevitably remain grounded in a particular discipline, but who will also have an acute awareness and appreciation of the other disciplines. Examples include the technologist with an awareness of the challenges of design (manufacturability, human-factors, aesthetics etc.) coupled with an appreciation of the business considerations of developing and marketing digital innovations into services and products, for organisational end-users and their customers. To do so, we create a creative space and a living laboratory where the PhD students can work together with other students, faculty and organisations, in clusters to develop and test emergent insights about innovation in the digital economy.

We closely align with the needs and goals of business and industry to ensure the relevance of our programme and to encourage technology exchange and early adoption of emerging technologies, processes and ideas. This builds on the strengths of Lancaster University’s InfoLab21 initiative, for example, a recognised leader in technology exchange, to seek a more value-added and marketable pathway from the digital laboratory to the marketplace. Students on the programme engage with a variety of industries from micro-businesses and SMEs through to large companies related to the digital economy. Through this, we seek to have real impact not just on the academic community but also on business and society more generally.

Prof. Gordon Blair, Director of HighWire