ExcellENT Programme at Loughborough University
Introduction
The ExcellENT Programme is a commercially led enterprise development and skills training programme designed to educate postgraduate research students and research staff and build upon the current enterprise culture at Loughborough. It is intended that ExcellENT will integrate into staff development programmes and the Loughborough Enterprise Office procedures and activities.
ExcellENT involves:
- IPSO running enterprise skills training workshops for groups of researchers and other staff;
- IPSO managing a small group of its highly experienced entrepreneur associates to engage with researchers and other key people over a defined period at Loughborough; and
- IPSO providing follow up on the entrepreneurs’ activity.
Objectives
The objectives of ExcellENT are threefold:
- To develop researchers’ knowledge and understanding of enterprise across the university;
- To enhance Loughborough’s reputation for enterprise; and
- To promote an increased flow of disclosures to the Loughborough Enterprise Office team
ExcellENT also fulfils some of the objectives set out in the Loughborough Strategic Plan, particularly the following:
- Increase both the breadth and depth with which all academic areas of the University are involved in innovation and knowledge transfer;
- Increase the number of disclosures that come forward for potential exploitation and extend the range of Loughborough’s industrial partners;
- Become more adept at supporting spin-out companies; and
- Increase the international impact of the University's enterprise activities.
For more information, please see the View from the University.
ExcellENT Approach and Methodology
IPSO’s focus is on technology commercialisation using a demand-led, as opposed to technology push, approach. The ExcellENT approach uses this same focus to develop enterprise and innovation understanding within the university setting. ExcellENT compliments the work of the Loughborough Enterprise Office technology transfer professionals and others working on the enterprise agenda within the university by bringing an independent, commercially focussed, external view to the research activities of academics. ExcellENT is not intended to divert or change the research activities of any researcher or department, but is expected to give them an ability to identify research outputs that might have commercial potential and feed those ideas into the Loughborough Enterprise Office.
The enterprise skills workshops are designed to develop researchers’ knowledge and awareness of enterprise and commercialisation activity generally. These workshops will focus on groups of researchers both on a cross departmental and departmental basis.
The IPSO Entrepreneur associates bring knowledge of demand to the university, exploiting their commercial knowledge, experience and success in order to assess internal IP and technology developments specifically from the perspective of industry demand.
The entrepreneurs have each achieved commercial success, taking technology from early stages through to exit, and each therefore have sector specific market knowledge. Under the ExcellENT framework the entrepreneur associates will meet with researchers and others within the university and will be supported by an IPSO commercialisation manager. Each entrepreneur will remain ‘on the team’ for between two and three months, making five or six visits to the university over that period, meeting in groups and potentially on a one-to-one basis in order to identify which specific elements of technology or IP under development could have relevance within the entrepreneur’s own sector. Each entrepreneur will give the university a different perspective on its IP and research activities.
The second entrepreneur - Clive Weatherby - is a founder CEO of Whitfield Solar Ltd, a company that excels at delivering renewable energy through the development of low-cost solar concentrators. During the founding of Whitfield Solar Ltd, Clive raised seed capital finance, successfully applied for 2 DTI/TSB and one EU funded project totaling circa £1.4M. He raised 2 further VC, angel Investor and industrial investor funding rounds. All this whilst establishing office and management systems, recruited teams and leading product development. He also established multiple test-sites for technology test and demonstration. In February 2008, he stood down as CEO to become CTO and worked on technical transfer of knowledge to a new team recruited from the automotive sector to commercialise product. Later he led the sales effort to establish a £20M sales pipeline and early adopter sales.
- Further information for Entrepreneurs click here
- Further information for Researchers and Academics click here
- Workshop times and subjects click here
- Workshop background information click here
- Workshop contacts: Binnie Tsui at Ipso Ventures
