Dear colleagues,
The expanded Financial Recovery Group met for the first time this week – thank you to all the colleagues who participated. Having a variety of voices around the table who are able to put forward the perspectives of students and School and Directorate staff will enhance the actions we are taking to secure our financial sustainability.
The Group agreed that it will meet on a weekly basis initially. Minutes from Group meetings will appear online from next week onwards, and I would encourage you to keep checking Our Financial Recovery website for further updates.
Each week, the Group will focus on specific elements of our financial recovery and this week, we received an update from Pete Edwards, Vice-Principal (Regional Engagement), who outlined our progress and future plans to grow our academic commercialisation.
Academic Commercialisation
Academic commercialisation, particularly enterprise and innovation, supports regional and wider economic development as well as our drive for greater research impact and enhanced performance in REF2029.
Activities under this broad heading comprise:
- industry-funded contract and collaborative research
- Innovate UK and Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) awards
- consultancy
- commercial use of University facilities and services
- delivery of professional training/CPD
- launch of spin-out companies
A range of activities have already been completed to support work in this area including:
- a revised Intellectual Property, Equity and Revenue sharing policy that will incentivise commercialisation by reducing the equity stake taken by the University in spin-out companies making our spin-outs more attractive to external investors, and also enhancing financial reward for academic inventors
- changes to criteria for academic promotion to place more emphasis on commercialisation activities, to ensure that efforts in this area can be appropriately recognised and rewarded
- launch of StartHere breakfasts to provide networking opportunities for staff interested in exploring commercialisation and to highlight regional innovation support services
- expansion of the number of Entrepreneurs in Residence working across our campuses to support staff in exploring opportunities to commercialise their research
- a new Costing and Pricing Policy (from 1 August) that aims to improve recovery rates on industry funded research and to bring the University closer to its sector benchmark in terms of cost recovery - potentially raising up to an extra £1M a year
- a new Strategic Corporate Partnership offer to provide organisations with the opportunity to establish long-term relationships with the University
- a new programme in partnership with Innovate UK and Opportunity North East, to support researchers in exploring potential commercialisation opportunities - ten teams from the University are currently participating in the Regional ICURe Discover programme
- a new customer relationship management (CRM) system to better manage relationships with external industry partners and so drive opportunities for revenue generation (planned launch early July)
Other ongoing activities include:
- a review of our Facilities & Services offer including future requirements for marketing, pricing and contract management
- a review of the Consultancy and CPD Policy to enhance activities in this space
Each School now has an Enterprise & Innovation Plan in place to support growth in this area, and discussions are ongoing with the Interdisciplinary Directors to ensure that collaborative opportunities are exploited across the whole University.
I hope that this provides you with insights into some of the activities which are underway to grow our academic commercialisation income and I would encourage you to reflect on how you can contribute to this important area of our work. Support is available from Heather May Morgan, Dean for Enterprise & Innovation (email: h.morgan@abdn.ac.uk) and the Research & Innovation team - please reach out to them if you have any questions or ideas you would like to take forward.
The Financial Recovery Group is meeting again next week and I will provide you with a further update on progress after that. In the meantime, please continue to share your thoughts, reflections and suggestions on any aspect of our financial recovery via the Group’s dedicated mailbox (financialrecovery@abdn.ac.uk).
Best wishes
Karl
Karl Leydecker
Senior Vice-Principal