New Hampshire furthers entrepreneurship

New Hampshire University has announced it is creating a new centre, dubbed Peter Paul Entrepreneurship Centre, as well as setting up a mentoring network and a seed fund.

The aim of these new initiatives will be to further the university’s research commercialisation and to ultimately generate a positive economic impact on the state’s ecosystem. The university has been celebrating successes recently, as the number of licensed technologies has been rising: more than 120 licenses have been signed in 2014 so far, with the university’s royalties more than doubling since 2010.

The new centre, mentoring network and seed fund are all initiatives by the university’s tech transfer office, UNHInnovation. Neither details about the mentoring network nor the size of the seed fund have been disclosed so far.

The Peter Paul College of Business and Economics is named for alumnus Peter Paul, who donated $25m to the university and successfully raised a further $25m from fellow alumni to build a new facility. It has not been disclosed how much of that money, or possible new donation, may have helped support the new entrepreneurship centre.

Lisa MacFarlane, provost at New Hampshire, said: “The Peter Paul Entrepreneurship Centre will extend the work of UNHInnovation and also provide support to students throughout the university. It is the next step in our efforts to integrate entrepreneurship across all seven colleges and we are grateful for Mr Paul’s ongoing commitment to increasing entrepreneurial activity on campus.”