The Next Leap

It's tempting to automate tech transfer: matching algorithms, data lakes, and AI summarising research papers in seconds. Patrick Speedie, co-founder and chief business officer of Inpart, has built software to match university research with corporate partners. And Inpart is integrating increasingly sophisticated AI into its platform, but Patrick is no evangelist. He's thought long and hard about th...

Is AI about to steal your job? Today, we’re tackling the messy, complicated reality of generative AI, and asking a simple question: is it actually creating anything worthwhile? Sue Turner OBE and Richard Cole from the University of Bristol, Ben Ackland from Meaning Machine, and Megan Butler from KPMG aren’t here to wax poetic about robots. They’re staring down a terrifying trend: AI is...

War in Ukraine. Conflict in the Middle East. Daily cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. As geopolitical tensions spike, capital is flooding into defence, and even a growing number of universities are open to research in this space. Yet, money invested in security innovation is money not spent on global aid. So should we really be doing this? Hetti Barkworth-Nanton says yes. As the CEO of Ploug...

Wageningen University & Research is a truly unique organisation combining a higher education institution with an applied research institute. This dual nature makes commercialising research an interesting challenge, particularly with Wageningen’s focus on agtech and food tech, where, for decades, each component in the supply chain has been optimised for cost. So, how do you give spinouts...

At the end of last year, Uniseed CEO Peter Devine stepped down after two decades at the helm of a venture fund that has not only survived and thrived for a quarter of a century, but which has completely reshaped the Australian innovation ecosystem. It was a good excuse to sit down with Peter and reflect on how far the world of research commercialisation has come, what lessons have been learned, an...

How can universities instil the entrepreneurial mindset in faculty, staff and students? Is this even something you can teach? And if you can, what are some of the challenges and pitfalls? Figuring out the answers to these questions, and more, is a panel of experts from around the world: Kirsty Collinge, the head of research strategy at the University of Edinburgh; Linda Koschier, the head of entre...

There aren't many university venture funds in central and eastern Europe but that could all be about to change if Károly Szántó has his way. The COO of OUVC, the venture fund and studio set up by Óbuda University in Budapest, is working on a playbook that other institutions in the region can use to create their own venture capital funds, an interest Károly has identified at several universities. B...

Towards the end of last year, the University of the Arts London secured a grant from Research England to lead a consortium of six universities that would develop a shared TTO focused on creative and social sciences. The pilot project, dubbed Shared Technology Transfer Office to Accelerate the Growth of Self-Funded Spinouts (STAGE), has now come to a close so it's the perfect time to reflect on wha...

What does the future hold for quantum technologies, what are the pitfalls and how can academia, startups, industry and government work together to solve the challenges ahead? Earlier this month, I chaired a panel tackling these questions for Bristol Innovations' first Foresight Live event, featuring Ruth Oulton, professor of quantum photonics at the University of Bristol, Zoe Davidson, a research...

So, you've spun out of a university to sell your shiny new invention. How do you attract customers? You'll need a marketing strategy, which isn't a fancy way of saying “put ads on Google" or “post on social media". Rather, marketing is everything that comes between your company and your customer. It's the art of figuring out your value proposition (you have a technology, but what's the product?),...

If you've never been in a licensing negotiation, you might think big pharma always has the upper hand over startups desperate to get a deal done to secure licensing fees and milestone payments. Actually, these are two parties that share the same goal, and sometimes, a startup has a product so good it holds all the cards. But is it always straightforward? Deal negotiations between pharma companies...

Stuart Wilkinson, chief executive officer of Knowledge Exchange UK (the professional body for tech transfer practitioners in Britain), has personally experienced the myriad ways university research commercialisation can impact people's lives. It's given him a holistic view of the sector far beyond what his previous two decades focused on the University of Oxford might have you think. But while spi...

2025 marks 100 years since the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) became the first-ever tech transfer office. It's been a very successful first century for the non-profit organisation as we heard last week, but that does pose an interesting challenge: how can WARF keep innovating and make sure it not only survives but thrives for another 100 years? The organisation is certainly not restin...

The story of technology transfer begins with Harry Steenbock's discovery of how to create vitamin D- fortified food. Steenbock, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, established the first-ever university tech transfer office not only to license his own invention to industry but also to support his colleagues present and future to do the same. This year, the Wisconsin...