Beyond the Breakthrough

July 26, 2024

Anita Nel, Brandon Paschal: South Africa is building a world-class innovation ecosystem

Setting up a venture fund in 2020 was a “huge paradigm shift” for Stellenbosch University in South Africa, because, for the first time, the executive leadership at the institution became interested in spinouts, says Anita Nel, the chief director for innovation and business development, because they understood that academic research had commercial value and a way to build, for example, local pharmaceutical expertise (the country had to wait six months longer than the northern hemisphere for a covid-19 vaccine because there were no vaccine developers or drug discovery companies in all of Africa).

July 19, 2024

Panel discussion: Can we fix “insane” immigration policies to attract entrepreneurs?

Immigrants are profoundly entrepreneurial people: they leave behind everything they know for a new country and new opportunities, often at a financial risk. This willingness to embrace change and build a new life from scratch means it should not be a surprise that in the US alone, 43% of Fortune 500 companies have been founded by immigrants.

July 12, 2024

Paul Devlin: Cardiff is at the forefront of social sciences commercialisation

Commercialising social sciences research is such a new area of technology transfer that when you spin out a company “you might be the first to do that type of deal,” says Paul Devlin, the head of research commercialisation and impact at Cardiff University.

June 28, 2024

Ilian Iliev: Here’s why NetScientific is doubling down on Cambridge

Last month, EMV Capital, a fund management subsidiary of British investment firm NetScientific, took over Martlet Capital, a Cambridge, UK-focused investor that had been the corporate venture arm of aerospace and defence company Marshall Group for nine years until 2021. The decision was the natural conclusion to EMV’s earlier decision to become an investor in Martlet and allows the investor to further tap into the Cambridge cluster, NetScientific CEO Ilian Iliev says.

June 21, 2024

Fernando Moncada: Five lessons for would-be academic founders

Universities, by their very nature, have always been strong centres of innovation. Scientific discoveries are routinely made in university research labs – but spinning those discoveries out into an operational business comes with numerous hurdles.