Ideas to Impact: Transforming Research Outcomes into Engagement with Business

The Biochemical Engineering Departments career development program recently delivered a 3 day workshop on creating entrepreneurial researchers. This bespoke 3 day workshop, ran on 14 June – 16 June 2017, was created in collaboration with the UCL School of Management. The primary objectives were to deliver the specific set of skills and knowledge (rather than a full spectrum business course) that would be most useful to research staff when creating and developing an entrepreneurial mind-set, and to instil confidence and understanding of the language of business.

The topics that were covered included:

• The fundamental concepts of entrepreneurial thinking within research
• Opportunity evaluation
• Evaluating an idea’s innovation potential
• Viewing the market’s perspective on that innovation
• Presenting an innovation to ‘investor’ audiences and persuading them of its potential.

The workshop was attended by a diverse group of 20 scientists, and included researchers from other UCL Science and Engineering departments. The ability to include delegates from outside of the Department of Biochemical Engineering was made possible by a £5800 grant from UCL Human Resources. This grant, obtained after a competitive bidding process, was awarded in recognition of the need for all UCL researchers to develop an entrepreneurial mind-set if we are to deliver on the UCL vison to ‘Change the World’.

The feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly positive, and this course is now being considered for inclusion in the School of Management’s catalogue of courses.

Facilitators:

UCL School of Management faculty members: 

• Fiona Reid
• Susana Frazao Pinheiro
• David Chapman