Blogs

Results announced by Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION), Europe’s leading technology business angel network, show that it has marked another successful year of helping innovative companies to raise funding. The OION Network has also announced a pipeline of additional deals agreed under the
Co-Investment Programme which it runs with Bank of Scotland Growth Equity.

EEDA awards funding to Cranfield University and University of Cambridge to establish presence at Colworth Science Park - press release, 9th April, 2008

The East of England Development Agency (EEDA) has awarded a £1.85m grant to two of the world’s leading academic institutions, to establish an academic presence at Colworth Science Park in Bedfordshire. The science and innovation hub is being developed under a joint venture between Unilever and international property group Goodman.

Cranfield University and University of the Arts London are set to launch a new Master’s degree in Innovation and Creativity in Industry, providing the next generation of business leaders with invaluable creative, technology and business skills. The collaboration will bring together both universities’ expertise in arts and design and engineering to deliver a novel Masters’ degree in design (MDes) that aims to provide future leaders with an understanding of how to exploit creativity within technology organisations.

The E.Factor, in cooperation with the Centre of Entrepreneurial Learning, based at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, invites you to learn more about this exciting online networking resource for entrepreneurs and hear about opportunities within the clean energy sector from top Keynote Speaker Peter Fusaro, chairman of Global Change Associates in New York.

Date: 21st April 2008

Download the Launch Invite from here

The Bay Area held an innovation roundtable in 2007 – the topic was innovation 3.0 and how the Valley can lead the world. You can find the report of proceedings on this web-site. Key conclusions were:

The region (the Bay Area) must work collaboratively—across both public and private sectors—to address the challenges, manage the complexities, and build on existing strengths.

The region should promote innovation leadership by operating within a global innovation environment while retaining a local innovation leadership position.

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE - 20 March 2008

MOD initiative to incubate innovation. Pilot likely to take place at HARWELL in the Oxford to Cambridge (O2C Arc)

A new pilot Centre for Defence Enterprise (1) will invite inventors, scientists and academics to join forces with private investors and develop new defence technologies to aid the Armed Forces, Baroness Taylor announced today.

David Cameron (Leader of the Conservative Party) at NESTA 3rd April 2008

David Cameron spoke at NESTA today (the 3rd of April). This is some of what he had to say:

I passionately believe that if we are to take on and beat the great challenges of our time, we need the culture of public policy-making to have innovation at its heart. That's the way to get the best results. And that's the way to get value for taxpayers' money. We will follow private sector best practice which is to introduce 'open standards' that enables IT contracts to be split up into modular components.

Enterprise Capital Funds have been established to address a market weakness in the provision of equity finance to SMEs. Government funding is used alongside private sector funds to establish funds that operate within the ‘equity gap’; targeting investments of up to £2m that have the potential to provide a good commercial return.

Do you AGREE?

Jonathan Kestenbaum (FT 26.03.2008) bemoans the decision of 3i to ‘abandon start-up investment’. He maintains that the decision of Philip Yea, 3i’s chief executive, to focus on investments in later-stage companies is short-sighted.

The Cambridge based consultancy, Library House, writes that recently a number of large technology corporates have moved their major European operations to Switzerland’s two most populous cities, at the expense of London. Just last week Yahoo! announced its intention to move its European headquarters from London to Geneva.