In November, the University hosted senior university professionals from across Europe for a Heads of University Management and Administration Network in Europe (HUMANE) meeting on the theme of innovation.
Dr Catherine Martin, Vice-Principal, Corporate Services, who welcomed the delegates, tells Bulletin what was discussed:
HUMANE exists to connect, develop and empower senior professionals across disciplines and share good practice in integrating academic matters with the range of services needed to support them.
Edinburgh does innovation well, so we were pleased to share what’s working. But we want to do more of it – we have set ourselves the goal of doubling the number of innovation-active academics by 2030 – so we also discussed our plans for the year ahead with our European colleagues.
Professional services are crucial to the process of innovation, because you need good advice on access to capital, a supportive culture and quality infrastructure, including physical infrastructure. All of that takes support from many departments from HR to finance to estates and communications, as well as from Edinburgh Innovations (EI), our commercialisation service.
Innovation is the deployment of knowledge to drive change. The University recognises and embraces innovation in all its activities, supporting its core missions of research, learning and teaching, knowledge exchange and social and civic contribution, as set out in Strategy 2030.
In our Research and Innovation Strategy launched last year, we focused on innovation as the ethical application of research to novel uses to benefit society through identifying imaginative solutions to problems, some of which may result in products that can be commercialised.
The University has its own in-house venture fund, Old College Capital (OCC), run by a team out of EI, which managed a record £141m of investment into University-associated companies last year. OCC offers crucial seed funding and support for early-stage companies, taking early-stage risk, but building lasting relationships with investors for the University through its co-investment model. OCC reinvests as those companies grow and, when they exit, others in the ecosystem benefit from the return of funds.
In Edinburgh Innovations, we have the right advice. More than 150 staff are employed by EI to provide business development and company formation advice and bring in and manage industry-related research funding. Crucially, EI also develops and protects intellectual property – assets that can be licensed by industry and that are critical to company formation. EI is currently recruiting for a Director of Venture Creation, which will be a key position.
Creating the culture and conditions for innovation is a key area for professional services this year. For example, key to the Research and Innovation Strategy is the development of an Innovation Career Pathway, with the aim of elevating innovation alongside research in the ‘traditional’ academic pathway. Building this into our framework is new in UK universities.
With EI, we have already created the Innovation Fellowships programme, now in its second year, to create a cohort of interdisciplinary, translational academics that can support each other. Some compelling exemplars can be seen in campaigns like EI’s Unlocking Innovation, featuring Inspirational Innovators from across the University.
For both staff and students, our aim is to embed an entrepreneurial mindset in University life, and create the freedom, conditions and ambition for innovation to flourish.