Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

UCL Innovation and Enterprise is UCL’s centre for entrepreneurship and business interaction. We help our students who want to learn about, start or grow a business. We provide funding, business mentoring and consultancy, free office space, networking opportunities and internships, a programme of events and prizes for innovation. 

UCL Advances is unique in the UK Higher Education sector

Get involved with local businesses and gain hands-on experience by becoming a student consultant.

UCL Advances Enterprise Scholarships provide funding for PhD students seeking to commercialise their research

Our business advisors provide impartial, confidential advice and business support to UCL students and recent alumni looking to start or develop their business

The UCL Bright Ideas Awards – established in 2008 to help new companies take their first steps into the market – offer a total of £50,000 in business loans to UCL student entrepreneurs.

Case study: MiniManuscript

PhD student Jake Fairnie and Dr Anna Remington (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) have developed a website where users can work together to summarise research papers. MiniManuscript, described as the Wikipedia for academic literature, won the UCL Bright Ideas Award in 2012 together with a Shell Livewire Grand Ideas Award. The duo hope that MiniManuscript will be a huge timesaver for researchers, providing a much-needed tool in the world of academic research. “It’s like watching trailers for movies before you watch them,” explains Jake, “it doesn’t replace the full feature but it means you only go to see the ones you really want to watch.”

Case study: BlueRonin

BlueRonin (now called BaseStone) is an integrated platform and mobile application, enabling engineers and architects to manage their drawings more effectively. It’s the brainchild of UCL alumnus Alex Siljanovski, who, following advice from UCL Advances, developed a proposition that won the London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge in 2013. He has now taken his product to market and runs the business from the IDEALondon offices in Shoreditch, East London.