INSIGHTS / News

The second cohort of Commercialisation & Innovation Fellows, part of the IMPACT-IP programme, is in full swing, with ten new Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from across the SETsquared Partnership Universities and the University of Portsmouth undertaking specialist business and commercialisation training. 

Knowledge exchange, impact, and innovation are becoming increasingly important from a government perspective and are an essential part of academic development in terms of achieving research funding and career mobility. Yet despite this, historically, awareness of innovation (and therefore the opportunity to gain key skills) has been limited to a few.

Through weekly training sessions and a bootcamp event (shown above), the programme enables the ECR’s to immerse themselves in developing commercial skills and business acumen, with specific sessions on the business model canvas, negotiation, Intellectual Property, market validation, how to prepare pitches and much more.

The cohort is supported by six Entrepreneurs in Residence who all have extensive commercial experience and are providing mentorship and guidance throughout the programme. There are also opportunities for the Fellows to undertake placements with investment firms to understand what deep tech investors look for in an early-stage proposition.

Ahmad Maaitah, a Commercialisation & Innovation Fellow representing the University of Southampton, commented: “This fellowship is an incredible chance to develop expertise in research commercialisation, innovation, and knowledge exchange. It’s a privilege to work with such an inspiring group of fellows from across the SETsquared Partnership universities.”

Vicki Lewin, Stakeholder Engagement & Cohort Manager, University of Southampton, added: “We see a number of different outcomes for Fellows taking part in the programme. Firstly and most importantly, they will take their new found knowledge and experience and disseminate it within their universities to create a much wider pool of ECRs that benefit. Potentially they may use the training to transition into a university Technology Transfer role or commercialise their own research. I’m looking forward to seeing how all of the Fellows progress throughout the programme”.

The Fellowship opportunity is part of the wider IMPACT-IP programme, which aims to increase the impact of higher education research by developing a Deal Readiness Toolkit, which will completely streamline the commercialisation and spin-out process. It’s a collective project to strengthen technology transfer capacity, foster deal readiness among researchers, and develop self-service resources for commercialising academic research, benefiting the higher education sector, investors, and industry.

Find out more about IMPACT-IP