The IET’s Innovation Management Technical Network has been focusing on the challenges faced by UK innovation at its early stages as well as on their path to commercialisation. That has featured looking at funding challenges, risk reduction, addressing the need for access to technical support and building an infrastructure to make innovation work in start-ups. The latter is particularly important and least well covered. Start-ups usually do not have the resources to use technology consulting, and an accessible and affordable pool of scientific, laboratory and development tools would help. Both may be found in UK universities with a little effort.
We have noticed that a comprehensive UKRI-funded brokerage platform has been assembled by the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB), called Konfer. See https://konfer.online/
This offers access to university innovation resources (a database of know-how, funding, R&D projects, businesses, patents and experts) and brokerage opportunities (UK and international organisations which are seeking innovation collaboration partners and investment). This open-source database has already gained many users in the scientific and engineering community as it is a very useful resource, but it may not have caught the eye of IET members yet. It looks as if it could become a very significant support tool for many aspects of innovation activity. We recommend that the IET community explore it because it offers unique access to hitherto inaccessible and confusing territory and can add value to any project, even at the earliest of stages.
Innovations in start-ups and within established companies can always benefit from external support, whether it is scientific, information on competitors, access to hardware or design and testing, or the very important route-to-market. The early stages of innovation projects can be improved by accessing external services, helping to ensure that an investable proof-of-concept stage can be reached. As the UK is a master of lean-funded R&D, any scheme that allows for cost effective access to expensive and scarce resources is a great help.
Those of us who have worked on building bridges between universities and businesses have found that there are many obstacles on both sides to be overcome and initiatives such as Konfer are a welcome initiative in overcoming them.
Market forces are not easily visible within universities whereas market driven start-ups may not have access to the relevant science, skills or equipment. Universities are no stranger to selling consulting to large companies and occasionally transferring technology to established businesses. They do create occasional spin-outs, but many more emerging companies are usually to be found in innovation centres which are often located near to universities. The reason for this proximity is that it is possible to benefit in many ways from the benefits of being beside a university. This access is what is on offer via Konfer, which addresses the complete national university network and not just the Golden Triangle or the Russell Group universities.
Innovators making use of a university may see the following benefits:
- Access to useful skills – generally technicians, postdocs, professors (usually in that order) are of use to start-ups. Programming skills, lab access, for example, may be sought.
- Making the underpinning science correct, reaching for mathematics to ensure that parameters, performance and specification are optimised.
- Academic staff may be able to support companies at a personal level or formally via agreement. Universities should be encouraged to be flexible in allowing staff to support local companies.
- Access to specialist hardware, expensive software or research facilities - which allow the innovation to be validated or performance measured to show that commercial prospects exist before lower-risk development capital has to be raised.
- Student projects may be used to test, trial and demonstrate aspects of the innovation without any loss of IP.
- Interns may be available from the students, postdocs may be used to support local companies.
All these (and the university coffee lounges) are available when a company is in an Innovation Centre, next to a university. A local university can be an accessible asset to companies if the right approach is made. It is also possible to part-assemble an innovation and find that there is a weakness to overcome and that funding for the project is hard to raise (whether as a start-up or inside an organisation). Identifying this issue and resolving it with the help of a university may enable that advance to progress when otherwise it would flame out. It helps that all universities understand the need to associate with local businesses as there are benefits to both.
Konfer offers access to 153 universities in the UK. The usual Golden Triangle or Russell Group universities are included, but this coverage also enables access to local universities. In such cases the skills and resources needed can be searched for and identified. The Konfer site has a searchable list of over 140,000 sector university experts and an equipment index of over 15,000 items of R&D relevant hardware. There is also a sector-searchable list of over 72,000 businesses so a specific commercial cluster can be identified for B2B target markets. Companies which have raised funding are identified.
Our experience in making use of university resources in innovation indicates that spinoffs may often be better if they become pull outs into a commercially focused company, and that mathematics departments may be used to give a start-up higher quality IP, as well as approaching other faculties directly associated with the innovation sector in question. Access to technicians, programming skills and prototyping may also allow an innovation to reach the starting line with a demonstrable proof of concept. Start-ups are always under-manned, of course, so these resources may be used to bridge those gaps.
Have a closer look at the Konfer platform and how it can be used; it is likely to evolve and be shaped by its user base. We hope at the TN that we can help with the connections of universities to businesses, intrapreneurship and projects/start-ups from our IET community and Konfer is a new tool to make use of in this area.
We may do more on this topic and this note is a precursor. Do provide me with feedback on how you think Konfer can be used, and how we can help.
Dr Mark Scibor-Rylski FIET – Innovation Management TN