There should be greater scrutiny before a university creates a startup, Tony Boccanfuso, the chief executive of university-industry partnership organisation UIDP, told the Beyond the Breakthrough podcast at the beginning of the latest season. Indeed, a more traditional partnership between corporates and researchers is often better for all parties — Kevin Leland told us how his platform, Halo, helps these two parties find each other and rally around complex R&D challenges.
Yet sometimes, a startup is the only way forward and an employment of last resort, particularly for underrepresented minorities, according to Prof Jenny Kuan from California State University, Monterey Bay.
As the season ends, we also look back at some of the insights from Tatiana Litvin-Vechnyak (Georgetown University) and Kelley Rich (University of Notre Dame), who oversee impressive student internship programmes at their respective universities.
We also hear from Simon Hepworth (Imperial College London), who guest-hosted two episodes on building spinout teams. The first one featured a noteworthy statistic from Osage University Partners’ Nii Dodoo-Amoo that a graduate CEO is the most successful type of spinout chief executive. The second one featured background from serial entrepreneur Allison Byers on a California bill that will force all investors active in the state to disclose diversity metrics from 2025.
Meanwhile, Will Caldwell (SaVia Health) and Gustavo Cavenaghi (Kortex Ventures) were among those who pondered the future of the hospital in an episode hosted by Fernando Moncada, who also asked GUV’s own Kim Moore about a novel licensing model at TU Darmstadt in the final interview of the season.
Beyond the Breakthrough returns on June 7 for season 3.
Further reading
- University of Notre Dame tries new, supersized approach to creating spinouts
- More universities adopt investor-friendly IP spinout terms
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