What is ICURe Explore?

Welcome to my first blog post! Before I dive into what I’ve been up to on week 1, I’m going to give a quick overview of what ICURe explore actually is and what I’ll be doing over the next 12 weeks as an entrepreneurial lead.

ICURe, stands for “Innovation-to-Commercialisation of University Research” and is the UK’s leading early stage research accelerator programme. The programme is funded by Innovate UK (The UK’s innovation agency) and basically supports university researchers in refining and validating the commercial potential of their research. In other words, if you have have been researching something (maybe a new method for testing drugs or a new battery technology), then the ICURe programme helps you find out if your research could make an impact on the world and if there’s a need for it on the market.

Trying to understand if your research has commercial potential isn’t straight-forward, especially given that most researchers have limited experience (or no experience in my case) assessing the commercial viability of a product or navigating the complex world of business. ICURe makes this a lot easier by teaching you everything you need to know about developing a business model, attending the right events, pitching your research, and finding and talking to potential customers, collaborators, and investors (you can find out more about ICURe here).

What does the programme involve?

So what will I actually be doing? Well the ICURe explore programme involves working full-time for 3 months as an “entrepreneurial lead”, with the aim of learning as much as possible about potential markets for your research.

On the first day, I was set the challenge of having 100 “meaningful conversations” over the 12-weeks. For those that find the idea of speaking to that many people in such a short time overwhelming, you are not alone! If you know me, you’ll know I generally love to talk, but even I have my upper limits and ICURe is definitely trying to push them…all in the name of market exploration I suppose! So yes, 100 conversations, and these can be with any individuals that will help you understand the commercial potential of your research, whether it’s a potential user, customer, collaborator or professional in your sector or field of interest. So day to day I will be networking as hard as I can (LinkedIn, I’m looking at you!), researching and preparing for meetings with companies in my field, and attending conferences and trade shows to understand the current landscape of innovation, identify key players, and pinpoint potential opportunities for collaboration. It’s all about gathering insights that will help shape the commercial potential of my research.

After 12-weeks, 100 meaningful conversations and however many conferences and trade-shows I manage to get to around the world, I’ll be invited to present my findings to a panel of industry experts and investors at the ‘Options Roundabout’. This is where I will pitch my technology, summarise my learnings and conversations, evaluate the market potential, and outline my future plans. If this doesn’t sound scary enough, I then have to wait for the results! (I’m picturing ‘The Apprentice’ meets the ‘X factor’- type results show). The panel will discuss the pitch and then give a recommendation either to start a spin-out company from the university (more details on what this is later), license the research to others or to go away and do some more research. If you are recommended to spin-out then you may be recommended for the ICURe exploit programme and be invited to apply for up to £200k in further funding to get the ball rolling and kick start your company. If you are recommended to go and do more research then you’ll head back to the lab to get stuck back in (at least in this case you might have time to socially recover from all those conversations!). But no matter what the outcome is, it’s one incredible journey for everyone involved!

There is a lot of information I’ve missed out here (did I mention I have a team? Sorry team I’ll get you in the next post!). But hopefully this has given you an overview of what I’ll be doing over the next few months and why! I’ll be keeping you in the loop with all things ICURe and maybe even start a live ‘meaningful conversation’ counter, so exciting things ahead.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next one!