Academic Involvement Benefits Everyone

While we have a lot of general business savvy people involved in our Company Assessment Groups (CAGs), but we are looking to involving more academics who might provide insights from a technical perspective. We also hope this will help promote a more enterprising culture by exposing participants to the commercialisation process. Maybe they will be inspired to start their own business or realise something they are working on in the lab has commercial legs. What's interesting is that the solution orientation of many fledgling companies coming from the private sector, contrasts the universities, where the technology comes first and the application second. Maybe we need to come at this issue from both ends to maximise our outputs.

Yorkshire has universities with world class research and teaching credentials. Almost 80 per cent of the departments at the University of York, for example, were given 5 or 5* ratings for research, meaning research was of international importance. Three of our universities are within the top 30 in the UK. Why then is the Yorkshire and Humber region languishing in 8th place for innovation in the UK? The way to ensure a better research to innovation ratio is to increase the amount of research inspired by commercial needs and bridge the gap between technology and commercial exploitation.

Any academics intrigued by all this, please contact Glen Hopkinson at Connect.