• Chairmen of Governing Councils of higher educational institutions (HEIs), Vice-Chancellors and Presidents of universities
• Deputy Vice Chancellors (Academic and Administration) of universities
• Rectors and Vice-Rectors of Polytechnics, Provosts and Deputy Provosts of colleges of education
• Deans, Heads of Faculties and Schools and Heads of Departments in higher educational institutions (HEIs)
• Directors of Ministries of Education, Research Institutes and Centres e.g.
• Directors of Centres for Entrepreneurial Development in HEIs
• Directors of International Partnerships in HEIs
• Representatives of national commissions for managing higher education, for example the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), the Nigerian Board for Technical Education, and the National Council for College of Education in Nigeria, their equivalents in Africa and developing countries

1. A forensic and comparative examination of different higher education strategic plans and business models across the world, including online education

2. Linking strategic and high-performance HE leadership to innovative strategic plans, and business models

3. Replicating innovative HE business models fractally across key innovation carriers in an institution – individual staff, research teams, departments, faculties (or schools), centres and institutes, and the entire institution

4. In line with 1-3 above, capacitating academics for balanced excellence in four main scholarships that define HE work: Discovery (Research); Integration (of knowledge from diverse fields); Application across academia, industry and government); and Teaching, 

5. Anchored on world-class Quality Assurance and Enhancement Frameworks around all elements of an HEI’s strategic business plan

6. Mastery of the above skills through intensive hands-on workshop drills and 1-1 surgeries with the facilitators, and applying them to your own institutional circumstances and underpinning strategic plans and business models

There will be a sight-seeing tour of the beautiful City of Sheffield, UK, considered to be the fourth largest city in the UK after London, Birmingham, and Manchester. The city sits on seven hills and seven valleys and counts amongst its tourist and leisure attractions the Peak District, a picturesque expanse of great geographical beauty, the relics of steel works which constitute one of its greatest historical reminiscences, and a sprawling Meadowhall Shopping mall, which echoes the grandeur of similar shopping malls in the United States, for an example, and is arguably the biggest such centre North of the United Kingdom.

You’ll relish the plenary papers, illuminating case studies, and interactive discussions of all crevasses of creative higher education leadership, which go beyond the usual talk-the-talk approach to most summits, by intimately exploring new higher education models that underpin deep-seating innovations in research, teaching, learning, and community services. The indicative content of this strand of the summit are summarized below.

1. An overview of the goals and four scholarships of higher education
2. Rebalancing the scholarships (of discovery, integration, application, and teaching) towards enhanced institutional excellence
3. Linking the goals to HE strategic plans and business models
4. Integrated business modelling and digital internationalisation of higher education offerings: templates, implementation and practice, and support for third-stream income generation.

5. Effective delivery of the above goals through strategic, high-performing, and transformational HE leadership, including
6. Strategic leadership, management models, and their trade-offs
7. Leadership without easy answers
8. Bold approaches for successful leadership in a complex world
9. Related change management perspectives
10. Reviewing HE strategic plans and business models to support the changes
11. Performance management and control systems for strategic HE leadership
12. Related HRM and workforce scorecard elements
13. The psychology of work and human performance: cascading responsibilities across different sections of an institution – individuals, teams, departments, faculties, centres, and entire institution, coherent with HE strategic plans and business models
14. Awakening the giant in a HE leader: perspectives from cross-cutting laws of success, rules for life, and habits of highly creative people
15. Case studies in transformational leadership across these domains
16. Beginning to create a HE organisational excellence model for robust HE management which reflect best practices in the above facets, using the European Framework for Quality Management (EFQM), for example.

sThese perspectives include thorough examination of diverse summit materials (papers, reports, strategic blueprints, case studies, and confidential HE strategic plans and business models, for example) which cover the strategic perspectives, challenges, and indicative solutions presented below. It is intended that further perspectives emanating from the interests of participants from different institutions will surface and be assimilated in the workshop discussions.

Brief description of the challenges (bullet points) and indicative solutions (1,2, 3…)

1. Faculty shortage and development

• Acute shortage of world-class lecturers and research scholars, especially senior faculty at PhD level due to brain drain, retirements, and unattractive working conditions

1. Establishing national and continental Doctoral Training Centres
2. New research and enterprise development training models
3. Hence, enhanced income generation potential among staff through effective HEI-industry-government collaborations, around the four RIAT scholarships
4. Benchmarking HE works on best practices in world-leading universities e.g. MIT, Harvard, and Oxbridge, adapted to the socio-cultural idiosyncracies of each HEI, etc.
5. Case studies and implementation guides

1. Governance, leadership and management

• Weak leadership, management and governance due to inefficiencies, underutilized facilities, duplicative programmes, low staff-student ratios, allocation of large share of budget to non-academic activities, poor HE leadership development in strategic planning, market research and advocacy, research management, financial planning and management, HRM, performance management, and partnership building and networking skill

1. Setting up resourceful centres of research, human, and enterprise development, with appropriate local adaptations
2. Special focus on strong institutional leadership, management and governance re the above leadership perspectives
3. Research-based spin-offs and teaching companies across the Triple Helix of academia, industry, and government settings
4. Other solutions that surface from interactive discussions during the summit
5. Case studies and implementation guides

3. Problems of quality and relevance 

• Mismatch between curricula and labour market requirements, education obsolete and disconnected from the economy, over-emphasis on theory and less on practice and technical competencies, poor generic, entrepreneurial, enterprise and employability skills, and lack of effective national and continental research and teaching excellence frameworks

1. Innovating and aligning disciplinary curricula regularly, in line with changing labour market requirements
2. Core and stakeholder-responsive innovations in research, teaching, learning, assessments, consulting, and community services
3. Using enhanced Harvard-style case studies and mixed pedagogies to link theory to practice in all disciplines, literally professionalising all disciplines, if taught the right way, with examples of the ‘right way’ in different disciplinary clusters (STEM, Biological and Biomedical, Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities
4. Fervent focus on whole-person 7E (expertise, experience, entrepreneurship, enterprise development, emotional intelligence, engagement/execution) education, and Triple Helix collaborations
5. Condensing all these experiences into a Global Research and Teaching Excellence Framework (GLORETEF), again covering the RIAT scholarships
6. Other solutions that surface from interactive discussions during the summit
7. Case studies and implementation guides

4. Weak research and innovation capacities 

• Inadequate research facilities; poor translation of knowledge to practice through adaptation, innovation and problem solving; slow expansion and development of innovative postgraduate programmes; low impact of HE research on national innovation systems, productivity, and ‘dynamic university-industry linkages’

1. Training workshops on the nexus among HE strategic goals, business models, the four scholarships (of discovery, integration, application, and teaching), and national socio-economic development
2. Training on 7E skills which nurture adaptation, innovation and problem-solving mindsets among HEI staff
3. Other solutions that surface from interactive discussions during the summit
4. Workshop session on some 50 plus specific academic staff development foci migrated from ongoing conversations in a Skills for Students, Graduates and Start-Ups (SSGS) Academy run on WhatsApp by the key facilitator
5. Case studies and implementation guide

5. Financial austerity and lack of capacity for diversification 

• Lack of adequate finance, competing public service priorities; weak support from international community; need to diversify revenues, but very limited experience; poor competitiveness in knowledge generation and adaptation; poor integration in global knowledge systems

1. Enhanced third-stream income generation through 7E innovations, whereby academics, PG students, and external industry and government collaborators generate enough funds and diversify their programmes, products and services competitively
2. Spinning off for-profit and social enterprises from PhD research, which replicates the Silicon Valley in Nigeria, Africa, and developing countries
3. Mastery, adoption, and diffusion of a new model of PhD supervision for achieving 2 above
4. Other solutions that surface from interactive discussions during the summit
5. Case studies and implementation guides

6.  Poor physical facilities and infrastructure 

• Little or no infrastructure improvements in the last few decades; widely deficient learning infrastructure e.g. internet access, library, textbooks, equipment

1. Again, training staff in research and enterprise development skills enables them to generate research and consulting incomes
2. For textbooks and research monographs, training author syndicates by disciplinary clusters in writing best-selling textbooks, superbooks, and research monographs with a good mixture of local and international examples and case studies.
3. Using very powerful integrated research and pedagogical strategies to create wealth based on disciplinary know-how, through research and consulting services and centres
4. Other solutions that surface from interactive discussions during the summit
5. Case studies and implementation guides
7. Inability to meet increasing demand for access and equity 

• Too many students seeking admissions compared to available HE capacities; small graduate level (MSc and PhD) enrolments, especially in core STEM and health fields vital for science-based innovation and national competitiveness, with less than 30% of Sub-Sahara African students in agriculture, health sciences, and STEM subjects

1. Curriculum innovations for effective teaching of large classes of students
2. Rolling out deep-theory, deep-praxis Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), short courses, certificates, UG and PG degrees, in many universities jointly awarded with leading universities in Nigeria, Africa, and developing countries;
3. Special focus on STEM subjects and quantitative business disciplines
4. Other solutions that surface from interactive discussions during the summit
5. Case studies and implementation guides.

8. Poor ethical standards manifesting in such disreputable acts as sexual harassment of students of the opposite sex, grade inflation, etc.

1. Detailed solutions emanating from the SSGS Academy mentioned above and domiciled in Afrihero, UK, www.afrihero.org.uk

2. Applying Howard Gardner’s  Minds to the Future in the solutions – Discipline, Creating, Synthesizing, Responsible and Ethical minds