The Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship Scheme

Abstract

A much-favoured strategy to strengthen the UK economy is to exploit more of the world-class research being carried out in universities. This requires increased collaboration between universities and the industry sector and will benefit enormously from arming academic researchers with tools and knowledge necessary to commercialise their ideas.

Here we describe the operation and success of a recent initiative from one of the Regional Development Agencies, Yorkshire Forward, namely the Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship. This Fellowship provides business and personal development training to academic and clinical researchers as well as continuous one-toone mentoring support and a financial contribution to progress commercialisation of the researcher’s idea.

The programme will accelerate the commercialisation of research from the participating universities and embed an entrepreneurial culture within the scientific community. This paper details several examples of best practice that can be used for similar schemes in other disciplines and in other geographical areas.