The Lord Mayor of Belfast addressed a new cohort of teams hoping to turn their research into commercial success
QUBIS, the commercialisation arm of Queen’s University has today kicked–off the first North–by–Northwest (NxNW) partners Lean Launch Programme (LLP) bootcamp of 2020.
NxNW partners is an expanding community of innovators, business advisers, entrepreneurs and investors which formed in 2018 to help accelerate the commercialisation of University research in the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Today’s event has for the first time included participants from the Republic of Ireland, with representatives from Dublin City University and University College Dublin. The Lean Launch Programme is a pre–accelerator initiative which provides researchers with the opportunity to validate their research, explore the most appropriate routes to market and gain further funding for their commercialisation journey. Teams will spend the next seven weeks on a rigorous global customer discovery journey, meeting customers to test their value propositions and determine whether there is a market for products or services that utilise outcomes from their research. The programme will culminate at a pitching event in Dublin on the 5th of March where participants will have the opportunity to pitch findings to an experienced panel of funders and stakeholders to help accelerate impact from their research. Today’s event, which took place in the Clayton Hotel, Belfast, was attended by the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Daniel Baker, who commented “The Lean Launch Programme really is a great example of true collaboration between academia and business. As this cohort of teams embark on their customer discovery journeys, they shall meet businesses across the globe to determine whether there is a market for products or services that utilises the outcomes from their research, truly demonstrating entrepreneurship in action.” Previous successful spinouts of the programme include Causeway Sensors, Green Lizard Technologies, and Phion Therapeutics who have gone on to secure further grant funding and achieve success in their respective markets. Queen’s has a strong track–record of generating economic impact from its research being one of the top UK Universities for income generated from Intellectual Property (IP)* and is leading the way with lean start–up in tech transfer. In 2019, Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s largest VCs, released a new in–depth study citing Queen’s as the UK’s most effective University at commercializing academic research. To learn more visit the QUBIS website or contact Lean Launch Programme Director Dr Paul Donachy p.donachy@qub.ac.uk .