research-commercialisation
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Kindling Ventures wants your first customer before your first company
A research idea can be useful long before it becomes a spinout. Kindling Ventures gives universities a way to test that proposition with customers, pilots and actual invoices.
UNSW Founders makes the first startup mistake cheaper
A university can teach you to build something. UNSW Founders adds the awkward questions, the prototype tools and the people who might help you turn it into a business.
SETsquared Partnership: the value of a second opinion
Six UK universities share a business-building network that helps founders test markets, untangle research deals and meet investors. Sometimes its most useful contribution is persuading a company to chase a different customer.
AI NATION buys founders time to find a customer
Germany’s AI researchers can build a prototype. AI NATION gives them six months, equity-free support and a more awkward assignment: proving someone wants it.
Converge: the business school for ideas without a business
Scotland’s university founders can know everything about an invention and very little about selling it. Converge gives them a place to learn, test and find their first commercial footing - without surrendering equity.
Oxford Science Enterprises turns lab discoveries into businesses that can leave the lab
A quantum company’s billion-dollar sale is the eye-catching result. Oxford Science Enterprises’ more revealing work happens earlier: finding founders, financing experiments and making room for the science.
CERI’s bet: Western Australia can export more than minerals
Mining money helped build CERI. Now the Perth nonprofit teaches researchers to build businesses, with subsidised classes, patient mentoring and a fund designed to back the next batch of founders.
SA Innovation Week wants the deal after the demo
South Africa’s new national innovation platform puts founders, funders and buyers in the same room. Its real test begins when the exhibition stands come down.
iAccelerate Wants Founders to Go Global. And Stay in Wollongong.
A university-backed incubator is giving regional entrepreneurs somewhere to learn, build and find capital. Its most revealing lessons involve an A$990 course, a shared coffee stop and who gets invited into the room.
Helsinki Think Company makes room for the first bad idea
Free workshops, campus workspaces and small grants give academic ideas somewhere to grow. Helsinki Think Company’s real product is the chance to try entrepreneurship before betting a livelihood on it.