The Next Leap

Is AI about to steal your job? Today, we’re tackling the messy, complicated reality of generative AI, and asking a simple question: is it actually creating anything worthwhile? Sue Turner OBE and Richard Cole from the University of Bristol, Ben Ackland from Meaning Machine, and Megan Butler from KPMG aren’t here to wax poetic about robots. They’re staring down a terrifying trend: AI is being shoved into everything, often without the right frameworks in place. The result? A tidal wave of low-quality slop and a dangerous lack of oversight. Cole says AI is a “recompilation engine”, but he does have concrete examples of AI uses that deliver something new, with significant human input. This isn’t about fearmongering. It’s about asking: who controls the tools, and how do we stop AI from turning our creative industries into a bland echo chamber? This episode is a recording of the most recent Foresight Live event. Our next event, on 6 May, will tackle AI’s cybersecurity double-edged sword. Register here and join the Foresight newsletter here to hear about future events and handpicked stories about innovation from the University of Bristol.

Wageningen University & Research is a truly unique organisation combining a higher education institution with an applied research institute. This dual nature makes commercialising research an interesting challenge, particularly with Wageningen’s focus on agtech and food tech, where, for decades, each component in the supply chain has been optimised for cost. So, how do you give spinouts a fighting chance? We also look at the Netherlands’ recent update to its national deal term principles, which Brechtje Vreenegoor was involved in creating, and we analyse how these principles strike a balance between the university’s interests and those of founders and investors. Then, we consider how Wageningen University & Research operates a unique pre-incubation programme designed to support researchers and students developing agricultural and food technology startups. This model focuses on validating ideas through a multi-stage process, including feasibility studies and proof-of-concept funding, rather than immediately seeking venture capital. And finally, Sebastiaan Berendse looks at Wageningen’s approach to venture capital funds, why its LP commitments are not just about capital but also drawing investors to campus, and why Graduate Ventures – which currently covers Delft and Rotterdam – is an enticing proposition for Wageningen’s ecosystem, which desperately needs more pre-seed cash. Read the transcript.

How can universities instil the entrepreneurial mindset in faculty, staff and students? Is this even something you can teach? And if you can, what are some of the challenges and pitfalls? Figuring out the answers to these questions, and more, is a panel of experts from around the world: Kirsty Collinge, the head of research strategy at the University of Edinburgh; Linda Koschier, the head of entrepreneurship at the University of New South Wales’ Faculty of Engineering; Koenraad Debackere, the executive director of KU Leuven Research & Development; and Paul Cheek, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. The panel will give insights into how you can empower students, how you can foster entrepreneurship on campus even if you live in a risk-averse culture, and how you can give people more time to focus on their business ideas. This episode is a recording of a ⁠TenU⁠ Hosts webinar, chaired by Catherine Headley, the CEO of the University of Manchester Innovation Factory. Further reading Paul Cheek mentions the book, From the Basement to the Dome, which offers an analysis of how MIT’s culture created a thriving entrepreneurial community.

Towards the end of last year, the University of the Arts London secured a grant from Research England to lead a consortium of six universities that would develop a shared TTO focused on creative and social sciences. The pilot project, dubbed Shared Technology Transfer Office to Accelerate the Growth of Self-Funded Spinouts (STAGE), has now come to a close so it's the perfect time to reflect on what's gone well and what needs to happen next. Gavin Clark, director of enterprise and commercialisation at the University of the Arts London, and Mark Mann, a consultant who helped bring the consortium together, join me to explain why they used a model from the University of Birmingham to build their project, how that approach works, and what the pitfalls are of wrangling six universities to say “yes” to an external tech transfer office run by specialists from Kindling Ventures. We also explore the importance of capturing data (which will be made public in the coming weeks and months), how the project has drawn international attention and even what it's all meant on a more personal level.

So, you've spun out of a university to sell your shiny new invention. How do you attract customers? You'll need a marketing strategy, which isn't a fancy way of saying “put ads on Google" or “post on social media". Rather, marketing is everything that comes between your company and your customer. It's the art of figuring out your value proposition (you have a technology, but what's the product?), of crafting messages that resonate with your customers and your investors (they're related but they must never be identical), and of evaluating markets to find traction. It will even help you decide whether you really should raise venture capital funding. Nicky Dibben runs Invention Marketing, helping deeptech founders build their marketing strategies. She's worked with NG Studios (an accelerator run by Northern Gritstone and Deeptech Labs for startups emerging out of the ecosystem around the universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield). She's also a mentor for initiatives like Founders at the University of Cambridge. Nicky shares her experiences mentoring startups, comparing ecosystems in Cambridge and northern England, offers tangible advice for founders, and ponders how “product” has become king of the hill even though that's not the right focus. Find a copy of Nicky's marketing framework here: https://www.invention-marketing.co.uk/copy-of-services

Stuart Wilkinson, chief executive officer of Knowledge Exchange UK (the professional body for tech transfer practitioners in Britain), has personally experienced the myriad ways university research commercialisation can impact people's lives. It's given him a holistic view of the sector far beyond what his previous two decades focused on the University of Oxford might have you think. But while spinouts are the easiest story to tell, they're just a small piece of the commercialisation puzzle. The majority of university IP gets out into the world through licensing agreements and R&D collaborations with existing businesses, or through consulting. That means the economy needs to be thriving: businesses need both the cash and the workforce to forge these partnerships. Having rebranded from PraxisAuril earlier this year, Knowledge Exchange UK is ready to play an increasingly big role in shaping how research commercialisation is done. One example is its plan to help its members better collaborate on a regional level to share resources and solve problems in ways that account for and benefit their locality. The organisation is also looking to drive forward the professionalisation of the sector. Here, Stuart ponders a proposal from his former Oxford colleague Tom Hockaday, who recently called for a Master's degree in technology transfer… and why that means tech transfer is not unlike the evolution of the paramedics profession.

The story of technology transfer begins with Harry Steenbock's discovery of how to create vitamin D- fortified food. Steenbock, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, established the first-ever university tech transfer office not only to license his own invention to industry but also to support his colleagues present and future to do the same. This year, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) celebrates its 100th anniversary: https://www.warf.org/centennial/ But while WARF has forever changed how universities go about creating real-world applications for their research, it wasn't all smooth sailing: because WARF was created decades before the Bayh-Dole Act (which gives US universities the right to exploit their IP), there were several run-ins with the government, regulators and industry both at home and internationally. Kevin Walters wrote his PhD on the history of WARF and now serves as the organisation's public affairs associate. He explains why all of this could only have happened in a state known for its dairy industry and how Steenbock's childhood days on a farm meant he managed to do something that paediatricians did not.