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| Carla Millar |
She appeared tireless and enthusiastic as was evident to see by her orange shoulder bag and matching espadrilles. Coming back to the land of oranje, she appeared ready to tackle the week ahead, which incidentally, will include her valedictory lecture, `Eve's Apple has many skins…'.
Within the framework of `Empowered by Twente' and the interaction between university, industry and the region, tomorrow's speech will focus on the human core of innovation and knowledge transfer with the emphasis on, `how a better understanding of knowledge and the knowledge society could affect the positioning of the university.' International guest speakers Professor Kai Peters, Professor JC Spender and Professor Nicholas Robinson are scheduled to lecture along with debate chair, Professor Wouter van Rossum.
Always a supporter of women in higher positions, Millar began her career in the private business sector at Unilever as their first female line manager. Evidently, her combination of skills in the world of business and academics were enough to land her at the UT in 2000, when a head hunting company recruited her from City University of London to become dean of the TSM business school, then part of Groningen. She was officially hired in 2004 as International Marketing and Management professor for the UT.
Sitting down on the train to talk with Millar about her UT experience and research, she says, `You will see the UT in five years time will be a completely different university.' Moreover, she attributes this anticipated change to the university climate of the 21rst century that will demand for a `new set of drivers'. She goes on to confirm, `Knowledge is difficult to value, as it is intangible, and linked to people.'
Millar will delve deeper into the subject of innovation and the transfer of knowledge in her lecture, explaining further to her audience the metaphoric biblical reference to the tree of knowledge and Eve. Her vision of the possibility for the future at the UT narrows into shape as she says, “knowledge has a human core-people are a university's and knowledge intensive company's biggest asset. Knowledge is both explicit, and tacit-this means that such institutions are also misguided seeking to be pure `rational man' organizations.”
Dr. Anne Flierman (Chairman of the Executive Board of the UT) will offer closing remarks at the symposium tomorrow. He has also said he is glad that Millar is staying on board as a member of the Ambassadeursnetwerk. Millar received yet another invitation in Mexico: to join the New Club of Paris, a think tank of academics and `knowledge entrepreneurs'. It's not likely that retirement equals the slow decline of knowledge acquisition or the break from innovative thinking for Professor Millar, just the opposite, she reflects, `I plan to continue doing research with various colleagues, publish more papers, finish a book (Digital Renaissance) and focus again on my consultancy and knowledge sharing activities.'
