Oxford University revealed yesterday it has decided to rebrand Isis Innovation, the institution’s tech transfer office, to Oxford University Innovation.
Oxford hopes the new name will better reflect the TTO’s connection to the university and strengthen its recognition with researchers. The decision follows recommendations by the Oxford University Innovation Working Group to further strengthen links between the two entities.
To achieve that goal, a range of practical steps have already been taken, such as regular staffing at hotdesks across university departments.
The university also gave the name’s similarity to Islamic State as a secondary reason for the rebranding effort. This has been causing business issues for the TTO such as emails being blocked by spam filters.
The TTO has spun out 16 companies in the past twelve months alone and signed more than 450 academic consultancy agreements. Earlier this year, Isis Innovation made headlines when its head Tom Hockaday decided to step down – though not before giving a final interview to Global University Venturing.
The new name is expected to become effective at the end of the month.
Linda Naylor, managing director of Isis Innovation, said: “Commercialising university research and expertise is important to enable wider society to benefit from the work of our world-leading academics.
“By changing our name to Oxford University Innovation the breadth of support from the university for entrepreneurial researchers will be more visible.
“We will also benefit from the global brand recognition of the university, allowing us to attract more clients and investors for the intellectual property-based technologies and for the many services that we provide to increase engagement with researchers.
“More successful engagements will contribute to greater impact from researchers’ work as well as greater financial returns to the University and individual researchers.”
