First pan-European awards programme for enterprise on campus launched

Fontainebleau, France, 11 June 2008

24 universities and institutes in bid to recognise academic entrepreneurs

The first pan-European awards programme to recognise academic entrepreneurs was launched yesterday at INSEAD’s Europe campus, Fontainebleau, by the Science|Business Innovation Board, a panel of leaders in industry, academia and policy.

The Academic Enterprise Awards Europe 2008 programme has already been backed by representatives of 24 universities and institutes in Europe – including Imperial College London, ETH-Zürich, University College London, Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet, business schools INSEAD and ESADE, and the Isis Innovation arm of Oxford University.

It is the first awards programme across Europe to focus on university spin-outs and their founders – often cited as a vital source of innovation in Europe – and will be open to academic entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship enablers across the continent.

Nominations for prizes in 7 categories open online in July at www.sciencebusiness.net, and the contest concludes on 2 December in Stockholm at Karolinska with final judging, a conference on academic enterprise and an awards ceremony. Winners will receive public recognition for their achievement and a chance at investment by corporate and individual investors invited to review nominees.

The awards will be judged by the Science|Business Innovation Board and representatives of the universities. The Science|Business Innovation Board, which holds meetings twice a year and makes recommendations on innovation policy, includes Pat Cox, former president of the European Parliament; Jean-Philippe Courtois, President of Microsoft International; Esko Aho, president of Finnish innovation fund SITRA and former prime minister of Finland; Roch Doliveux, CEO of Belgian pharma UCB; Dean J. Frank Brown of INSEAD; Helmut Schühsler, Managing Partner, TVM Capital and Chairman of the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association; and President Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson of Karolinska Institutet. Jury meetings for the awards will be held on 5 November at University College London, and on 2 December at Karolinska.

It’s often said that innovation is the lifeblood of a vibrant economy – but in Europe, members of the Science|Business Innovation Board felt, a risk-averse culture in its universities prevents innovative ideas from getting out of the labs and into the marketplace.

The awards will give public recognition to those researchers, engineers, professors, students and government officials in Europe who have done the most in 2008 to foster a culture of enterprise on campus. This can be through taking the risk of launching a spin-out company, developing a discovery into a marketable innovation (perhaps at the risk of the tenure-track publication record), or promoting policies that create a receptive environment for entrepreneurship on campus.