YORKSHIRE INNOVATION FUND
UNIVERSITY OF HULL CASE STUDY
Annie Hooper
Who is Annie Hooper?
As a sole trader Annie Hooper has a track record of project
management and consultancy in community development
and regeneration, working in rural development, agriculture
and the fishing industry. Annie has a background in
environmental management and legislation. She has skills
in project management, engagement, consultation and
facilitation with a keen interest in the economic and social
impacts of natural resource management and legislation.
The YIF-funded innovation:
Building on her interest in the fishing industry, Annie required specialist support to develop a new
software product allowing spatial fisheries management data to be presented in a more appealing
way, enabling clients to make better informed decisions about their service delivery and policies.
Annie had started to develop more easily interpreted visualisations, but lacked the technical
expertise to develop data capture software that was slick and flexible enough to both present a
range of data types and be commercially viable.
Led by Dr Magnus Johnson, a team from the University’s Centre for Environmental and Marine
Sciences provided expertise to develop software providing the dynamic and high quality visual
representations of the data needed to move beyond the norm of paper based graphs and charts,
helping clients better interpret and interrogate the data. The University team provided specialist
technical support, data interpretation methodologies and software development to support data
recording/input, and to produce a series of exploratory visualisations. The project provided Annie
with the ability to present a high quality product in a time- and cost-efficient way, making proposals
more competitive.
Business impact:
The project gave Annie a pilot product that
was then used in a real life situation,
enabling sample visualisations to be
presented and feedback gathered to
finalise the product. The growth strategy
could then be implemented, starting with a
blog and web presence promoting the
products and services delivered by the
consultancy and its associates.
Annie hopes that the product will generate
a high quality result more competitively and
profitably, winning more work and
negotiating better contracts. Ultimately
Annie hopes to see sufficient growth to
move from a sole trader with associates, to
creating a new company employing up to 4
FTE roles in its first five years.
Annie Hooper
University Impact:
The YIF investment enabled Dr Johnson’s team, then
based on the University’s Scarborough campus, to
cement relationships with Annie as a local business.
The University team’s work with the company has led
to further collaboration including follow-on activity
under the guise of ‘Project Fish’ and partnership
working with the Seafish Advisory Board.
The software developed for live data collection is now
being used as part of a research project looking at the
relationship between windfarms and commercial
fisheries off the Yorkshire coast, in collaboration with
the Holderness Fishing Industry Group.
Dr Johnson also hopes to develop a research paper
that examines the data produced by the industry
suitable for publication in ‘Fisheries Research’, the
International Journal on Fisheries Science, Fishing
Technology and Fisheries Management.
About YIF:
The University of Hull was a partner in YIF, an
innovation support programme part-financed by the
European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and led
by the University of Bradford on behalf of ten Yorkshire
& Humber universities. By its close in June 2015 YIF
had:

attracted £3.06million of investment from ERDF
as part of Europe’s support for local economic
development through the Yorkshire and Humber
ERDF Programme 2007-13. Partner universities
contributed a further £1.87m, bringing the total
investment to £4.93m.

helped 215 SMEs develop ideas for new products,
services and processes through collaborations
with the region’s universities, supported 174
innovation projects and involved over 260 of the
region’s academic experts in project delivery.
University of Hull Team:



Dr Magnus Johnson, Senior Lecturer in
Environmental Marine Biology
Dr Phil Wheeler, Senior Lecturer in Ecology and
Environmental Science
Nicola Dobson, Research Assistant
“The use of a dynamic system to
help with the interpretation of
complex spatial data is innovative
and gives us a real edge. We can
engage our clients more readily and
allow them to generate greater
usage of results – leading to
‘happier’ clients and a stronger
reputation for ourselves.
This will support us in reaching
new and high value clients and
business growth.
YIF funding has been critical;
without this we would not have a
commercially viable product and
would therefore not be in a position
to take the steps to achieve our
organisational objectives.”
(Annie Hooper)