It takes an ecosystem to raise a successful start-up
The geography of entrepreneurship is “spiky“, meaning that from region to region there are significant variations in rates of start-ups and, in particular, “scale-ups“—new businesses that are evolving into larger enterprises. This can be explained by the fact that successful entrepreneurship occurs in “fertile soil”—economic and social environments conducive to entrepreneurial activity. And in some […]
Two new N. Ireland equity funds have £95m for investments into innovative SMEs, universities
TWO new follow-on equity funds are making £95 million available to give potential high-growth start-up businesses in Northern Ireland an early-stage cash injection. A second round of the TechStart seed fund and the fourth Crescent Capital development fund are part of Invest NI’s ‘Access to Finance’ portfolio, which provides loan and equity funding to innovative […]
Boosting University research funding in the UK
Chris Skidmore MP is Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. He is currently the MP for Kingswood, South Gloucestershire and is the current Vice-Chairman of the Conservative party for policy in 2018. He announced that University research was set to receive a major boost in funding. […]
Imperial College launches student-run fund
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Central Europe Visegrad fund moves into backing research and innovation
A small fund originally dedicated to cultural cooperation between the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia is now increasing its effort to support cross-border entrepreneurship and innovation in central Europe. When the Visegrad Fund was first established in 2000, the four countries focused on funding cultural exchanges and education and capacity building, which were the […]
Imperial academics win €11 million ERC funding
Academics in Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Physics and the Business School, were rewarded in the latest wave of Starting Grants – worth around €1.5 million each. ERC Starting Grants recognise talented early-career scientists who show potential to be research leaders and have a scientific track record showing great promise. Across Europe the ERC awarded 408 grants, worth […]
Innovation Primer – How Oxford University Is Preparing Students For Entrepreneurial Life
There can’t be a university in the land that hasn’t spent the last decade or so encouraging its researchers to spin out their cutting edge work into tech startups. The journey looks something like this. A group of researchers make a breakthrough in the lab – let’s say in a field such as A.I. or […]
European Research Council makes move to promote commercialisation
The European Research Council (ERC) is stepping up efforts to promote the commercialisation of research its funds, setting up a website to link holders of its €150,000 proof of concept grant with potential investors. To date, 26 proof of concept grant holders have joined the Virtual Venture Fair, which is intended as a shop window for […]
Imperial-TUM seed fund takes off
The fund, backed equally by Imperial and Technical University of Munich as part of their ‘flagship partnership’, will seed early-stage research activity in healthcare haptics, battery storage, and ideas for a circular economy. The start-up funds will help researchers explore new ideas and directions of research to further their respective fields: Re-working wind By combining our expertise through the […]
Hopes for £100m venture capital fund to back university spin-outs
A partnership of North East universities is looking to create a £100m venture capital fund that will be used to grow spin-outs from some of the region’s top minds. The Northern Accelerator was initially created to support spin-out businesses from the organisation’s partner universities – Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria and Sunderland. It is now looking to […]