New year, new editor

Over the past year in my time as Global University Venturing’s news editor, I’ve repeatedly encountered a quandary at social events when someone I’ve just met asks what I do for a living. Quick as a flash, I’ll respond with “journalist”. However, this vague response often leads to creating more questions than answers.

To explain, I’d launch into a speech about universities looking to take equity stakes in spin-out companies commercialising research. This would then divulge into a speech about oncology therapeutics, the applications of graphene, and venture capital. This, it turns out, grounds small talk at a party or in the pub with all the force of Zeus’ lightning bolt. As the number of people who backed away slowly, glaring at me like I’d just admitted to being a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, began to rack up, I realised I needed a lighter touch.

Instead, what I’ve settled on is telling them is that I report on the spearhead of innovation. This then nicely diverts into an entirely more easily digested conversation about Google to explain how the whole process works, or into a derision of superficial journalism and its detrimental effect on society – a decision largely dependent on how many tabloid front pages I’d seen that day.

The more I thought about it, the more “spearhead of innovation” sums up what the readers of GUV do. Universities and similar institutes are often at the pointy tip of innovation, being as they are veritable treasure troves of ideas and potential. Hit the right one and, through the work of tech transfer units, incubators, and subsequent investments, that idea expands, just like a spearhead.

It’s an incredibly exciting field to report on. Any one of those spearheads, just like the original flint tool itself, could be a potential game changer for humanity.

Take the afore-mentioned oncology therapies. While the general public seems to expect a one-shot eureka moment that will cure cancer, we instead get to see an altogether more complex and intriguing overview of the fight against it. We see companies like Juno Therapeutics forming (with a stunning $120m backing) with its chimeric antigen receptor technologies which turn the body’s own immune system into an assassin of tumours, and how Juno and many other spin-outs like it evolve, collaborate, and form a united front against one of the biggest killers in human history.

Then there’s graphene. The breadth of uses of the two-dimensional “wonder material” are still being added to, but currently, the University of Manchester’s discovery has the potential to revolutionise the majority of technology it can be incorporated into. Medicine, computing, renewable energy, energy storage, biofuel and alcohol production, and numerous other sectors can and probably will be impacted by graphene, and it is university research and the companies spun-off from it that is leading the charge.

Supporting the movement is a growing number of incubators and university investors stepping up to assist these ideas in becoming a reality. More universities are developing space and networks for fresh companies carrying research into the real world, while others such as Stanford are going one step forward and directly investing in incubator-approved startups with its uncapped StartX fund. Other institutions, like Cambridge with its £50m startup-focused Cambridge Innovation Capital investment vehicle, are tuning into the idea that providing direct financial capital to their companies is not only a way to ensure further funding is available, but that these companies have what they need to grow and prosper.

It is this spearhead that we will continue to examine and report on in greater depth as I step up as GUV’s editor, with James Mawson, who remains editor-in-chief, moving to focus on the launch of our third title Global Government Venturing. Over the coming year, we will continue our data-based reporting of deals, providing analysis, and provoking discussion over best practice. In addition, we will be looking to further get under the skin of university spin-outs through the telling of their stories, as well as keeping our fingers on the pulse of the developing university venturing sector, with further plans for GUV to be unveiled throughout the year.

In the meantime, a special thanks to our readers for their support in our first year, and I wish you all a successful and prosperous 2014. Here’s to an ever-sharper spearhead.