Using a Master’s Level Course To Stimulate Creation of High Technology Enterprises
Since 2001, Manchester Science Enterprise Centre has been running a Masters course whereby a student brings a business idea from their own subject area and spends half the time working on developing the technology in their own department and the other half in learning business skills and actually setting up the idea as a live business. Approximately 1/3 of the students leave the course with a trading entity.The business ideas are generally hi-tech ideas from areas such as computing, physics, chemistry, biology and textiles where the university is working on leading edge discoveries. Since its inception in 2001, the course has produced over 30 trading entities from approximately 100 students. Many of these businesses now employ several other people and have received numerous awards and publicity in local and national media.The course has allowed the student to build up the business over the course of the year in an environment of low overheads with intangible advantages such as networking, access to experienced mentors and the academic staff and their connections.However, clearly, setting up a business from a hi-tech idea takes time, often longer than the one year that the student spends at the university, especially those businesses requiring further bench research and large amounts of further funding. It can take time to develop the technology to a workable level, to source funding, find partner companies etc. Many need to protect their intellectual property before any funding can be considered. Many ventures were in a position to apply for funding e.g. Government grants by the end of the year but where no funding was found many students opted for applying for jobs out of necessity. Several students needed to be entrepreneurial, working part time e.g. consultancy while trying to forward their business.This paper will detail what can be achieved in one year using examples as to how former students have obtained funding for their ventures from this unique start and what new strategies we have as a department to aid this process. It will also show how the companies have grown from a venture space (just a desk, computer and telephone) to a university incubator space using examples of projects that have successfully been completed from the master’s course which have either led to a successful start up company or to “knowledge transfer” between the university and an outside agency
Year of publication: |
[2021]
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Authors: | Phillips, Robert |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Saved in:
freely available
Extent: | 1 Online-Ressource (12 p) |
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Series: | |
Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Notes: | Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments May 1, 2007 erstellt |
Other identifiers: | 10.2139/ssrn.3800748 [DOI] |
Source: | ECONIS - Online Catalogue of the ZBW |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013235816
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