LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

About UCL Enterprise

250 academic staff involved every year in enterprise-related training by 2015

500 new commercial and social enterprises to be created by students and staff by 2015 with UCL support

One activity on average every day of term to foster entrepreneurship among UCL and the local community

Free use of ‘hatchery’ facilities on campus for the strongest student enterprises, including desk and meeting space, and support from a student business advisor

Enterprise at UCL

Enterprise is important to all universities, but resonates particularly with UCL. From our inception, we were created as an enterprising institution with a bold ambition to create a university dedicated to the greatest good for the greatest number. This principle has underpinned the evolution of modern-day UCL, a confident and enthusiastic community of enterprising researchers, educators and scholars, working together for the immediate, medium and long-term benefit of society.

UCL Enterprise provides UCL’s structures for engaging with business for commercial and societal benefit. It includes three units: UCL Advances, UCL Business PLC (UCLB) and UCL Consultants Ltd (UCLC). Together, they provide access to the capabilities and resources of the UCL community to help businesses start, grow and develop.

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UCL works in a variety of partnerships with large multinational companies in energy and resources, telecommunications, transport and construction, as well as with smaller companies specialising in art, advertising, communication, imaging and entertainment.

The UCL School of Energy and Resources, Australia is working with Australian energy company Santos, which, as funding partner, provides scholarships, research funds and a professorial chair (1).

UCL, BAE Systems and Alexander Dennis are working together to develop state-of-the-art fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles, including buses (2).

International scanner manufacturer Arius 3D has installed the latest generation colour laser scanner (3) at UCL – the first of its kind in Europe – for multidisciplinary research collaborations.

UCL alumnus Colin Chapman founded Lotus Engineering, which conducts research collaborations and supports a scholarship with internship (4).

Corporate Partnerships

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UCL and Intel are establishing an Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities, together with Imperial College London. The institute aims to explore new technologies and how they can be used to enhance the sustainability of cities and their inhabitants’ quality of life. The institute will conduct world-leading research that draws on expertise in technology, user experience, business model innovation, the built environment and commerce.

UCL signed a five-year agreement in July 2009 with global design firm Arup to boost collaboration and training in a number of fields including design, engineering and sustainable development. The collaboration was designed to enable researchers from both organisations to work on joint projects, exchange personnel and jointly supervise doctoral training programmes. This successful agreement resulted in Arup being named UCL’s Enterprise Partner of the Year 2010.

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BHP Billiton Sustainable Communities, a charity established by the global resources company BHP Billiton, is providing UCL with US$10 million over a five-year period. This enabled the establishment of an Institute for Sustainable Resources in London and an International Energy Policy Institute in Adelaide, Australia. The two institutes will drive research into the complex economic, legal, environmental, technological and cultural issues faced by the resources sector, and provide a framework within which expertise from the northern and southern hemispheres can be shared and innovative responses developed.

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UCL Advances

UCL’s centre for entrepreneurship, UCL Advances, offers training, networking and business support for staff, students and external entrepreneurs to encourage and enable new enterprises to get off the ground.

Unique in the UK higher education sector, its primary role is to promote a culture of entrepreneurship on campus, and engagement with entrepreneurs and small businesses beyond UCL’s boundaries. The centre currently delivers more than 30 programmes.

The UCL Enterprise Bootcamp (1) offers free training for UCL students. Workshops convey basic business concepts along with some of the hard and soft skills needed to succeed in business.

UCL leads the UK PhD Centre in Financial Computing, a joint initiative with the London School of Economics, London Business School and 20 leading financial institutions (2).

Seedcamp (3) sees top venture capital investors and business leaders representing many of the leading European technology start-up companies share their expertise with UCL students.

Citrus Saturday (4) is a nationwide initiative for school pupils. The two-week programme trains students in running their own business, culminating with the students setting up lemonade stalls around the capital.

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UCL Advances offers training and networking support for small businesses, helping enterprises get off the ground and develop. Training on offer includes short courses in small company management and entrepreneurship guest lectures that are open to all entrepreneurs and small business leaders, regardless of whether they have previously had any connection to UCL.

For UCL students looking to start businesses of their own, UCL Advances provides dedicated business advisors, ‘hatchery’ pre-incubation space to work in and a variety of funding and other support activities. UCL Advances also supports the UCL Union Entrepreneurs’ Society, which offers further opportunities for learning and development and an annual events programme that has won national prizes.

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UCL Advances delivers UCL’s Knowledge Transfer Partnerships activity, which aims to apply academic knowledge for the direct benefit of business. Under the scheme, one or more talented researchers are placed in a company, typically for a period of two years. They work within projects central to the company’s future commercial development. Supervision is undertaken jointly by the business and academic staff, and government funding is provided.

UCL Advances hosts regular networking opportunities between researchers, business leaders and investors. It also partners with external groups with similar objectives, such as 3Cs, a community offering free advice for budding entrepreneurs, and the Open Coffee Club, an informal meeting ground for entrepreneurs, developers and investors hosted weekly at UCL.

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The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Programme, funded by the Goldman Sachs Foundation and delivered in London by UCL Advances, helps small, but established, businesses and social enterprises move to the next level of expansion, by providing them with training and one-on-one support from experts in entrepreneurial learning. The programme is based on the widespread view among experts that a combination of education and support services best addresses the barriers to growth for small businesses. Businesses with scalable operations are provided with the tools and resources to develop long-term sustainable growth and job creation in their local communities.

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The HELO (Higher Education London Outreach) project helps to bridge the gap between small and medium-sized businesses and higher education institutes by transferring research and knowledge to London enterprises. It is an initiative led by UCL Advances in partnership with London Business School and supported by secure data partnerships firm MegaNexus Ltd, among others. Successful partnerships have included FirstFruit, a small voluntary-sector organisation working to improve the lives of the capital’s most vulnerable people, and Witness Confident, which aims to reduce the level of violent street crime in two London boroughs by 20 percent before 2015.

SMILE (Selected Mentors and Interims for London Enterprises) aims to help London-based small and medium-sized businesses develop by analysing their needs and connecting them to business mentors. The initiative is aimed at enterprises that have already passed their start-up phase and are experiencing managerial challenges that are hampering their potential to grow significantly. Companies that have already been involved include Teachus – a tuition agency – and Kids4mation, which produces books and workshops to raise children’s self-esteem. SMILE and HELO are part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

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The UCL Awards for Enterprise annually honour the efforts and accomplishments of UCL’s innovative and entrepreneurial academics, students and partners. The awards ceremony and reception highlight UCL as a hub of innovation and commercial activity, while bringing together academics with businesses and investors. No other university brings together its activities in this kind of showcase to give a complete cross-section of its enterprise activities.

“I wouldn’t claim to be the world’s greatest entrepreneur; my company, if anything, is a modest success. I have 63 budding entrepreneurs in my MSc class…It’s about how we scale that up across the university; if we could mobilise the talent that we’ve got here, then you really will change the world!”Dr Dave Chapman (UCL Engineering), winner of the UCL Provost’s Spirit of Enterprise Award

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“It’s such an interesting group that are here tonight – it’s overwhelming how many luminaries from entrepreneurship, industry and government as well as academia are here. The cross-section of businesses and industries that are represented is phenomenal.”Lawrence Marazzi from Agility Global, winner of an Innovation Central London Bursary

“I made a sound system that was small, portable, and loud enough that I could still do my tap-dancing to. When I came to UCL, I saw a poster for the Entrepreneurs’ Challenge and I thought maybe this is a good place to start this – and turned out it really was! The whole process where this was actually commercialised has been a fantastic learning curve – it’s almost like getting a second degree in business from UCL.” Bradford Backus (UCL Ear Institute), UCL Award for Enterprise winner (2007), creator of R-Cube Sound System, founder of Audio 3 Ltd

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A UCL team designed and built a synthetic windpipe ‘scaffold’(1) used in an operation in Sweden. The windpipe was developed using nanocomposite materials. UCLB helped patent these materials and develop their use in further medical devices.

UCLB supports academics in the translation of their research from the laboratory to the market(2)(4).

Endomagnetics Ltd was spun out from UCL to capitalise on research led by Professor Quentin Pankhurst (Director of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory and Professor of Physics at UCL). Its magnetic sensing technology enables surgeons to detect whether breast cancer has spread to other parts of the body(3).

UCL Business

UCL Business PLC (UCLB) is a leading technology transfer company, which supports and commercialises research and innovations emerging from UCL, one of the UK’s leading research-led universities. UCLB has a successful track record and a strong reputation for identifying and protecting promising new technologies and innovations produced by UCL academics.

UCLB invests directly in development projects to maximise the potential of the research and manages the commercialisation process, taking technologies from the laboratory to market readiness. It supports UCL’s Grand Challenges strategy, which aims to increase the university’s contribution to real-world problems relating to global health, sustainable cities, intercultural interaction and human wellbeing.

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Formed to capitalise on UCL research in 1999, Biovex is a biotech company developing a new class of vaccines to treat and prevent cancer and certain viral diseases, and a functional genomics platform for gene target validation. US biotechnology specialist Amgen acquired Biovex in February 2011 for approximately $1 billion.

The Carbon Trust is investing more than £500,000 into a collaboration between UCL and Imperial College London to accelerate the commercialisation of an innovative fuel cell. The new technology could help the UK gain a significant share of a fuel cell market estimated by the Carbon Trust to be worth up to £16 billion in 2020.

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Evexar Medical Limited is a UCL spin-out that focuses on the development, manufacture and distribution of innovative medical devices specifically designed for patients with a broad range of surgical conditions. The company has built a strong portfolio of products, including compression socks and mesh for soft tissue reconstruction.

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UCL Consultants

UCL Consultants Ltd (UCLC) was established to bring UCL academics together with national and international clients, providing access to the university’s cutting-edge expertise and world-class facilities.

UCLC offers a one-stop office for academics wishing to carry out consultancy work, providing comprehensive contractual, tendering and administrative support that enables UCL staff to ensure timely, high-quality delivery to meet clients’ requirements. It has extensive experience in working with a wide variety of clients including multinational and governmental organisations, space agencies, international companies and small to medium-sized businesses. To date UCLC has contracted nearly 1,400 consultancy projects worth almost £40 million.

Professor Stefaan Simons (UCL Chemical Engineering) used micro-manipulator devices to investigate for Unilever how humidity affects detergent granulation(1).

Researchers at the UCL Energy Institute provide construction consultancy(2), including the refurbishment of a Victorian house in Camden(4) to increase energy efficiency, which won a Sustainable Housing Award.

The UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science manages the National Community Safety Information Sharing Systems Network for the Home Office(3) and provides consultancy for clients such as the NE Strategic Intelligence Assessment.

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UCL Arts & Humanities won a bid to provide expertise to enable internet users to create full web and email addresses using non-Latin script names for the first time. ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – which coordinates the internet’s addressing system – initiated the change, which will open up an entirely new way of using the internet.

Northgate Public Services, a health and social care business, appointed Andy Goldberg (Senior Clinical Lecturer, UCL Institute of Orthopaedics & Musculoskeletal Science) as a consultant to advise on how to bring innovation to the health and social care market. Andy Goldberg is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and the founder of the medical innovation organisation Medical Futures. He has helped inventors and entrepreneurs turn their ideas into businesses.

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Dr Andrew Edkins, UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, received an award from the Association for Project Management in 2009 in recognition of the development of a Project Directors’ Development Programme (PDDP). The PDDP, developed by UCL, Constructing Excellence and Local Partnerships, was set up to advance the leadership skills, procurement expertise and commercial awareness of project directors from the public and private sectors.

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Transforming Enterprise at UCL

UCL already has an outstanding reputation for excellence in enterprise. Our vision is to be a recognised global leader in enterprise and innovation that benefits society and the economy.

We have developed an ambitious strategy to drive us on to achieve this vision by 2015, based on five core aims:

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To create a highly effective structure of support for enterprise activities at UCL.

To become the leading UK university supporting university entrepreneurs, by stimulating and supporting the creation of at least 500 new commercial and social enterprises founded by UCL students and staff over the next five years.

To ensure that enterprise is embedded across the breadth of academic activities.

To become the UK leader in collaboration with external enterprises by: creating a portfolio of support to improve and encourage working with industry and other enterprises; doubling the volume of industrially-sponsored research activities; achieving a major increase in consultancy carried out by the UCL community; and doubling the volume of activity in executive and continuing professional education.

To maximise the societal impact of UCL enterprise activities through effective publicity; by working closely with alumni to help promote and support enterprise at UCL; and by working with partners to promote the importance of university enterprise as part of the agenda for sustainable economic growth.

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Involvement in enterprise benefits the whole of the UCL community and our partners. It enriches students’ learning and helps them prepare for and find employment. Our partners bring UCL staff fresh expertise, new ideas for applications of research and the potential to accelerate commercialisation and product development.

Our staff and students, in turn, provide our commercial partners with specialist, cutting-edge knowledge and resources that strengthen their competencies and competitiveness, helping businesses meet their goals. We look forward to hearing from you.

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£15,000 prize money on offer through the London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge, a workshop programme and business plan competition for budding business-owners

Up to £100,000 available each year to support student businesses through Bright Ideas Loans

More than 120 spin-out companies and more than 200 licence-bearing royalty agreements delivered from UCL’s intellectual property to date

More than 2,000 students participate in enterprise activities each year

www.ucl.ac.uk/advances www.uclb.com www.uclconsultants.com

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www.ucl.ac.uk/enterprise

+44 (0)20 7679 2000This publication was printed on recycled paper using only vegetable-based inks. All paper waste from the manufacturing of this publication was recycled and reused. Production: UCL Communications

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