Fontainebleau, France – The first pan-European awards programme to recognise academic entrepreneurs was launched yesterday at INSEAD’s Europe campus, Fontainebleau, by the Science|Business Innovation Board, a panel of leaders in industry, academia and policy.
The Academic Enterprise Awards Europe 2008 programme has already been backed by representatives of 24 universities and institutes in Europe – including Imperial College London, ETH-Zürich, University College London, Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet, business schools INSEAD and ESADE, and the Isis Innovation arm of Oxford University.
It is the first awards programme across Europe to focus on university spin-outs and their founders – often cited as a vital source of innovation in Europe – and will be open to academic entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship enablers across the continent.
Nominations for prizes in 7 categories open online in July at www.
sciencebusiness.net, and the contest concludes on 2 December in Stockholm at Karolinska with final judging, a conference on academic enterprise and an awards ceremony. Winners will receive public recognition for their achievement and a chance at investment by corporate and individual investors invited to review nominees.
The awards will be judged by the Science|Business Innovation Board and representatives of the universities. The Science|Business Innovation Board, which holds meetings twice a year and makes recommendations on innovation policy, includes Pat Cox, former president of the European Parliament; Jean-Philippe Courtois, President of Microsoft International;
It’s often said that innovation is the lifeblood of a vibrant economy – but in Europe, members of the Science|Business Innovation Board felt, a risk-averse culture in its universities prevents innovative ideas from getting out of the labs and into the marketplace.
The awards will give public recognition to those researchers, engineers, professors, students and government officials in Europe who have done the most in 2008 to foster a culture of enterprise on campus. This can be through taking the risk of launching a spin-out company, developing a discovery into a marketable innovation (perhaps at the risk of the tenure-track publication record), or promoting policies that create a receptive environment for entrepreneurship on campus.
Award themes
For founders of successful spin-out companies:
ICT
Life Sciences
Energy/Environment
Materials/Chemistry
The Young Entrepreneur
The Fast Start (for new spin-outs)
For an individual who enabled campus enterprise :
The Bridge Award
For more information, contact:
Richard L. Hudson
CEO & Editor
Science|Business Publishing Ltd.
+32 496 520305
richard.hudson@
Special features
- The only pan-European awards for enterprise at universities and institutes
- Backed by some of Europe’s best research institutions
- Awards focus on individuals, rather than organisations
- Access to the Science|Business Investment Connection service linking nominees with potential investors
Academic founders
ESADE Business School, Spain
ETH-Zürich, Switzerland
Imperial College London, UK
INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
ISIS Innovation, University of Oxford, UK
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
SetSquared (Universities of Bath, Bristol, Southampton, Surrey) UK
ParisTech (association of 10 Grandes Écoles), France
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
TU Delft, The Netherlands
University College London, UK
University of Warwick, UK
About the Science|Business Innovation Board
To encourage public dialogue about innovation policy in Europe, the Science|Business news service in 2007 created a blue-ribbon panel of leaders in industry, academia and policy, with the support of Microsoft Corp. The board meeting today at INSEAD was the third of a series that began at Imperial College London and ESADE Business School, Barcelona. The next meeting is on 2 December at Karolinska in Stockholm.
Regular participants in Innovation Board meetings include:
-Esko Aho, President, Finnish innovation fund SITRA, and former prime minister of Finland
- Pat Cox, President, European Movement, and former President of the European Parliament.
- J. Frank Brown, Dean, INSEAD
- Jean-Philippe Courtois, President, Microsoft International
- Roch Doliveux, CEO and Chairman, UCB
- Denis Payre, Co-founder, Business Objects, and CEO, Kiala
- Philippe Pouletty, Managing Partner, Truffle Ventures, and Chairman, France Biotech
- Helmut Schühsler, Managing Partner, TVM Capital, and Chairman, European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association
- Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson, President, Karolinska Institutet
Organisation and reporting of the Innovation Board’s work is by the Science|Business news service, co-founded by Richard L. Hudson, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe, and Peter Wrobel, former managing editor of Nature. Science|Business, based in London and Brussels, publishes news of R&D investment and policy daily online and in special print reports, and organises meetings of R&D policy makers, investors and researchers. It works with a network of 10 leading research institutes, including Imperia College London, Karolinska Institutet, University College London and ETH-Zürich. The company’s mission is to encourage enterprise in science.
For more information, contact:
Richard L. Hudson
CEO & Editor
Science|Business Publishing Ltd.
+32 496 520305
richard.hudson@
