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Enterprise and Innovation Programme

Programme Director: Andy Cosh

Project: The Integrated Knowledge Centre (IKC) Commercialisation Laboratory

Project leaders: Alan Hughes and David Connell
Other Principal Investigator: Andrea Mina
Collaborating Faculties: Judge Business School, Engineering (CAPE and the Institute for Manufacturing), Physics (Cavendish)
Project dates: 2007-11
Funding: EPSRC

Overview    |    Output

The CIKC is a large EPSRC-funded programme of research aimed to the exploratory development and commercialisation of research conducted in the area of photonics and advanced electronics by groups at the University of Cambridge's Departments of Physics and Electrical Engineering jointly with industrial partners and teams at the Judge Business School, the Institute for Manufacturing and the CBR.

Within the CIKC programme the objectives of the CBR Commercialisation Laboratory are:
  1. To investigate the innovation dynamics of the CIKC technical projects
  2. To facilitate commercialisation processes of CIKC technologies
  3. To compare relevant international policy frameworks for the commercialisation of technologies emerging at public-private interfaces.
Regular meetings have taken place with principal investigators during which information was collected on development paths, obstacles, opportunities and changes in behaviours and expectations over a period of approximately three years. Facilitation of commercialisation activities has progressed hand in hand with this regular review process and has led to a number of initiatives for exploitation of the innovative potential of CIKC technical projects. The comparative policy work has involved fieldwork at international sites that were identified as key in the photonics and electronics area through both desktop research and the PI interview programme. The CBR team has conducted site visits to Germany, Belgium, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the USA.

Facilitation of CIKC commercialisation activities has led to a number of initiatives for exploitation of the innovative potential of CIKC technical projects (see http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/CIKC/). The comparative policy work, based on site visits to Germany, Belgium, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the USA, led to the manuscript 'The Challenge of Technology Development in Intermediate Research Organisations' (by Andrea Mina, David Connell and Alan Hughes) which is being prepared for submission to a leading innovation journal. The longitudinal study of the CIKC university-industry innovation processes will result is a new paper, in progress, which will relate the innovation pathways to resources, barriers and constraints, opportunities, behaviours and expectations.

As part of the policy engagement and impact and dissemination plan, after playing an active role in the consultation process that led to the Hauser Report on The Current and Future Role of Technology and Innovation Centres in the UK, the conference 'Re-thinking the Impact: Private and Public R&D in an age of austerity' was successfully organised at the Judge Business School in December 2010 jointly with the UK Innovation Research Centre. This included contributions from distinguished experts and policy makers. In addition, the team has submitted evidence for the planning of future UK innovation policy initiatives to the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology.
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