OUI targets social enterprises

Oxford University Innovation (OUI), the institution’s tech transfer office, unveiled a social enterprise initiative on Tuesday anticipated to output at least 10 impact-focused spinouts each year.
The strategy has been designed to complement OUI’s existing resources for patent-orientated spinouts and student-run businesses by supporting entrepreneurs whose ideas might not be inherently patentable.
A new unit under the helm of Mark Mann, innovation lead for humanities and social sciences at OUI, will oversee the program.
The company already has a pipeline of more than 25 social enterprises, which generally combine profit-making strategies of business with the impact-led perspective of a charity.
Businesses now likely to receive a boost from OUI include cashless homeless donations app Greater Change and lifesaving procedure instruction platform Life.
The program will have access to a £550,000 ($720,000) social and environmental impact fund called SE2020 set up by OUI to help put promising ideas into practice.
SE2020 will help recipients with conducting affairs such as feasibility or proof-of-concept studies, prototype development and scale-up testing.
The vehicle is backed by UK government-run vehicle Global Challenges Research Fund and government research agency Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, both part of UK Research and Innovation.
Mann said: “With our new social enterprise service, we can now get far more of the great ideas generated in Oxford deployed across the world and improving people’s lives.
“The legal and financial space is a complex one, but we can help academic teams to navigate it and to get the best solution for everyone.”