A new program instituted by an education team from the University of Bristol’s industry specialists, RED (Research & Enterprise Development), held its first event for research postgraduates on July 5th and 6th exploring ideas around enterprise, innovation, and entrepreneurial business. Thirty-five participants were put through their paces in a program in which they were asked to develop a technology start-up business plan in just 24 hours. They were exposed to a variety of experts working in technology spin-outs within the university, local intellectual property lawyers, venture capitalists, and people working along the interface between academic research and commercial and social enterprise.

“The premise of the course is to plant the notion that having a good idea is not enough to change the world; you need to be able to do something with it — that might be a licensed discovery, a venture-capital-backed spin-out company, a grant-funded social enterprise, or simply being better at advocating for good new ideas in big organizations weighed down by inertia,” says course director Dave Jarman. “We have basically hot-housed the process over two days and enabled the researchers to meet some really interesting, inspiring, and useful people who might advance their careers in research.”

The program was attended by postgraduates drawn from the Advanced Composites Centre for Innovation and Science, the Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, the Bristol Chemical Synthesis Doctoral Training Centre, the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences, and the Industrial Doctorate Centre in Systems. The course is the first of its kind at the University and RED hopes to provide follow-up programs in future years for this cohort and to widen the program to involve more researchers from more disciplines.

Source: Bristol University

Posted August 17th, 2010 under Intellectual Property Marketing

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