The UK Innovation Forum (UKIF) has been set up to foster relations between academics and businesses and promote the commercialisation of university research.
The forum is funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), to help technology transfer offices of universities, institutions, research councils and government-funded laboratories find the management they need to commercialise new technologies and create spin-out businesses. At the same time, UKIF will provide business people, who wish to create spin-outs, access to this technology.
The organisation has been set up by Ian Tracey, of STFC’s Innovations team, and Gerald Law who is responsible for several successful spin-out companies. UKIF has two other research councils, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, ten of the UK’s leading universities, and a number of knowledge transfer networks, science parks and funding bodies, as members.
Tracey said, “UKIF has been created to meet the needs of both the business community who want to be involved with spin-outs, and the technology transfer offices who are always struggling to find the right business people needed to validate their new technologies and exploit their new companies.
“Until UKIF we had all operated on a very local basis and will have missed out on many individuals and conversations that could have identified new areas where technologies could be useful.”
Instead of the two or three opportunities a year coming out of a local university, all new ideas will be pulled together in one place for the first time. “Executives will have the ability to hear about new technologies and ventures created all over the country, then put themselves forward for roles in those companies and even propose a different venture to the one the research institute had thought of originally,” Law said.
UKIF will feature panels of experts for different sectors, who will provide guidance on the commercial potential of new technologies. Technology transfer offices will be able to turn to these panels when looking for guidance on the commercial potential of a new technology. “Through these knowledge transfer networks we hope to find exactly the sort of expertise that the technology transfer offices need”, Tracey said.
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