Spin-off AustriA

In 2000, Science Minister Lord David Sainsbury fostered activities that aimed at introducing commercialisation as a third mission alongside research and teaching at UK universities. During the course of the last 20 years, academia implemented highly efficient and standardised processes to spin-off companies in cooperation with government and VC investors. The phenomenal success of this initiative led to 6.000 new companies in Cambridge – the so-called Silicon Fen.

There is a relation between the quality of research and qualities of companies that a country can produce. If the UK had the same correlation between high quality research and successful companies as in the US, there would have been two trillion more GDP in the years between 1979 and 2013. The EIC will stimulate the scaling up of innovative, deep tech, market creating companies in Europe, crowding in private investment and becoming a global hallmark of innovation excellence.

In proportion to the number of researchers and students there are not enough spin-offs in Austria.
Based on personal experience: what can be done to empower the community, create incentives and foster a culture of entrepreneurship that is actively supported and not simply tolerated by the academic leadership?

Moderation by Klara Brandstätter (I.E.C.T.) with Raphael Friedl (tech2be), Martin Mössler,
(Science Park Graz), Marlis Baurecht (aws) and Silvia Laimgruber (FFG)

This keynote provides a perspective of current frontiers and ongoing challenges in China’s entrepeneurial landscape.

What university entrepreneurship can bring to apost-COVID world

Universities play a pivotal role in developing ideas that shape the world. They need to create the right conditions to foster entrepreneurial ideas and they need to put in place the mechanisms to enable new ventures to start and to grow. Some universities have become hubs at the heart of innovation eco-systems, like Stanford and Berkeley in the Bay area, or Oxford, Imperial, UCL and Cambridge – the ‘golden triangle’ - in the UK.  These research-led universities provide a continuous flow of new ideas and the talented people to work on them. They use their convening power to connect the many different stakeholders necessary for new ventures to succeed. This presentation provides an overview of the approaches that help generate and support new start-ups and spin-offs from universities. It draws on case-studies of firms that have emerged from the London eco-system, and the experience of developing Imperial College’s White City Innovation Campus - home to a vibrant community of university start-ups, venture funders, scale-ups and corporate technology companies.

In this presentation, we explore key success factors and instruments of ETH Zurich, which enable the successful spin-out of around 30 new high-tech ventures per annum and how ventures succeed to translate disruptive technologies into commercial revenue-generating products.

Innovation is invention x commercialization. If either is zero, there is no innovation. Investors must team up with customer-centric entrepreneurs to bring their breakthrough inventions out of the cool comfort of the laboratory into the cruel crucible of the marketplace. Speed is the handmaiden of innovation. Selling new concepts and products - usually long before they have been built - is one of the key critical success factors. Defining and quantifying the value proposition, identifying and addressing the “jury” and preparing an effective elevator pitch - these skills and attitudes often make the difference between success and failure.

Over the past forty years there has been an evolution of the relationship between academia and commercial activities in the United States. Cornell University came to this awakening somewhat later and more hesitantly than many of its peers. Nevertheless, the evolution occurred and entrepreneurial activity at Cornell is vibrant spanning all disciplines and all members of the community. Students, faculty, the Ithaca community and the university all benefit from a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Moderation by Anita Ender (CeMM) with Greg Galvin (USA), Ken Morse (USA), Tomas Brenner (CH), David Gann (UK)