The University of California Berkeley released a study last month, based on two decades of records from the University of California system, which supports a viewpoint that’s been reiterated by this magazine for some time now – collaboration between smaller universities will generate the critical mass necessary to enhance bargaining power and conduct effective technology transfer.
One organisation that personifies this message is SetSquared, the incubator representing the UK universities of Bath, Bristol, Surrey, Southampton, and Exeter. While each university still retains a technology transfer unit, SetSquared has become the de facto standard incubator for much of the spin-outs coming out from the five universities, as well as supporting student-led startups and other new businesses.
That partnership recently hit a major milestone in its decade long history. SetSquared over the past decade has incubated over 1,000 companies with a survival rate of 90%, and has helped those firms raise over £1bn in external fundraising. By way of comparison, Cambridge Enterprise, the technology transfer office of Cambridge University, has also raised over £1bn for its firms, but took twice as long to do it.
Much of the driving force behind SetSquared, which is ranked as the joint number one university incubator in Europe (and fourth in the world) by the University Business Incubator (UBI) Index, comes from numerous benefits stemming from its collaborative spirit. The inter-university collaboration grants SetSquared access to 7,400 academics, which between them receive up to 10% of the UK’s higher education research budget and generate roughly the same share of the country’s total university patents.
The incubator has also successfully developed links with industry, with a large chunk of its incubated companies coming from outside of the university base. This has led to SetSquared having a more flexible approach to incubation, with each startup treated individually. Dhruv Bhatli, one of UBI Index’s co-founders, recently slammed UK university incubators as becoming sausage factories, but singled SetSquared out for praise. He said: “SetSquared is different – it adapts its offer to fit the entrepreneurs, which is unique and the only way to avoid the “one-size-fits-all” approach.”
The links to industry have also led to the SetSquared Open Innovation Programme, which looks to marry large corporates and organisations to some of the smaller firms and innovative ideas passing through the incubator. The programme is still in its early days, but has so far attracted BAE Systems, Barclays, CGI, Freescale, Johnson & Johnson, Philips Innovation Services, Sony, South West Water, Ericsson, Westpac Bank, and several others.
We’ll be taking a closer look at recent deluge of news to come out of SetSquared in the forthcoming issue of Global University Venturing, featuring a Q&A with Simon Bond, the new Innovation Director of the incubator.