Beyond the Breakthrough with Thierry Heles

Dec 05 2024 140 ep. 34 mins 14
Beyond the Breakthrough with Thierry Heles Podcast artwork

Beyond the Breakthrough is a weekly interview show with the brightest minds in university innovation tackling the question: how does research get from a lab into the marketplace? It is hosted by Thierry Heles.

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Create more spinouts, more quickly with standard deal terms and willingness to fail

Dec 05 2024 27 mins  
To date, 49 universities in the UK have adopted a recommendation to take between 10% and 25% equity in their life science spinouts. The recommendation was inspired by the USIT Guide, published last year by tech transfer group TenU, making it the guide’s arguably biggest impact yet.

More proof of concept funding is needed to create impactful spinouts

Nov 28 2024 28 mins  
The UK government has committed £40m ($50m) to proof of concept funding over the next five years. How should the money available be deployed? One idea — inspired by the Flemish approach — is to set up investment committees of industry, VC and university experts to allocate the money.

How the UK’s spinout review settled “myopic” equity debate

Nov 21 2024 26 mins  
A year ago, Irene Tracey, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, and Andrew Williamson, chief executive of venture capital firm Cambridge Innovation Capital, published their UK government-sponsored report into the spinout ecosystem with a list of 11 recommendations on how to uplift the sector.

Landon Borders, Alexa Narel: How the University of Kentucky makes whisky more sustainable

Nov 08 2024 38 mins  
Whisky may not be the first industry to come to mind when you think of university innovation, but for the University of Kentucky — based in a US state known around the world for its bourbon industry — it's an obvious next step in its tech transfer activities.

Pearse Coyle: Incubators are a distraction, acquire customers early instead

Oct 31 2024 38 mins  
Researchers with promising technology in the UK can apply for public innovation agency Innovate UK's pre-accelerator programme ICURe, which supports them in reaching out to 100 potential customers to understand the market viability of their idea.

Asia lags behind other regions for university venture funds

Oct 24 2024 14 mins  
Just over a fifth of academic institutions in Asia have access to a dedicated university venture fund, with a third of all funds found in Japan — that’s the finding of GUV’s latest regional analysis published last week.

Maria Roche: Professor-led spinouts have poorer outcomes

Oct 17 2024 36 mins  
Should professors be spinout founders? An increasing number of universities are pushing their faculty to be more entrepreneurial but data suggests that that's not always a good thing — for the professor, the spinout or the students.

Why university venture funds are still uncommon in US and Europe

Aug 29 2024 20 mins  
Despite the benefits of universities having a venture fund they can draw on to invest in companies they help commercialise, they are still a rarity in places with mature venture capital sectors like Europe and the US.

Season 3 Recap: Groundbreaking incubators and ideal startup founders

Aug 08 2024 26 mins  
We look back at some of the highlights of season 3, which featured many a discussion about university incubator and accelerator programmes, including insights from Jim Shaikh (The Greenhouse at Imperial College London), Paul Devlin (Cardiff University), Brandon Paschal (LaunchLab at Stellenbosch University), and Duncan Johnson and Miles Kirby (NG Studios powered by Deeptech Labs).

Andy Shenk: New Zealand’s remoteness makes it ideal for space tech (rebroadcast)

Aug 01 2024 40 mins  
Andy Shenk, the chief executive of Auckland UniServices, the commercialisation subsidiary of the University of Auckland, knows that collaborating with the Māori people is important. He also knows that big data and AI offer great opportunities, but tells me about some of the challenges too.