Innovation Forum Business Builders

Innovation Forum; a Boot camp for Business Builders

Innovation Forum Oxford (IFO) is a mission-led platform that has inspired, educated, nurtured, and supported entrepreneurially-minded scientists to take their science-based ideas from lab books to board rooms. One of a network of branches strategically located around the world, IFO is part of a network of more than 10,000 entrepreneurially–minded people, all seeking to build bridges between academics, industry leaders, investors, and policy makers. Together, we focus on the evolution and the future of today’s innovations; ranging from the nascent stage to the cusp of commercial applications. We deliver through three streams; local activities and workshops, a global accelerator known as IMAGINE IF! and an annual flagship HealthTech Leaders and Investors Conference.

At face value, IF is an accelerator, and many of our participants have built businesses that have attracted considerable investments. More broadly IF has contributed to the innovation and entrepreneurship space for almost a decade and supported hundreds of companies through their channels, occupying a reputable space in the very crowded world of accelerators.

However, for me, IF’s truly impactful legacy has manifested over the years in the talent of the associates, scientists at the grassroot, who run it. This, of course, was always the main impetus of IF, but it crystallised in hindsight as I share with you here, and in a series of profiles that will be published to celebrate these stars.

I had the privilege of witnessing the evolution of IF from its early stages and am proud to be considered one of the founders. I experienced the buzz and excitement of the initial meetings in London with my peers from across the UK and Europe, to exchange IF experiences and feed our ambitious IF vision. I lapped up the adrenaline-fuelled run-up to our flagship event ‘The Leaders Conference’, a concept that we, as a young group of scientists, have truly pioneered. In this format, we have gathered under the same roof both talented early career scientists and more experienced and revered academics from top universities, along with industry leaders, investors and policy-makers, to foster knowledge exchange and breakdown silos. We simply instigated the meeting of minds and capabilities that can only result in impactful collaborations informed by talent and need.

When my co-founders and I started IFO, a combination of intuition and belief in ‘the scientist’ gave us courage to re-evaluate academic research beyond the cycle of ‘publish or perish’. As scientists ourselves, we wanted to explore our place as highly-ambitious, highly-driven, highly-skilled, highly-creative, highly-analytical trainees in the world of innovation and entrepreneurship, which seemed to be hijacked by a particular archetype that scientists did not fit. Between academic weariness and a desire to do things differently, we were drawn to create and lead branches of Innovation Forum in Oxford and beyond to support our peers fulfil a potential hindered by limited horizons. Together, we are PhD students, post-docs and early-career professionals who volunteer our time with a common calling, in return for abundant rewards that are not palpable until that Eureka moment: a path that was never considered but now makes sense; a role that was thought unattainable pre-IF but now is within reach; a possibility of pivoting in a trajectory from a scientist with few conventional career paths to a visionary leader in the start-up and the investment worlds.

Join me in celebrating IFO and IF alumni and unravel together how they harnessed IF, not only as a platform to support their peers in their entrepreneurial ambitions, but most strikingly as their own springboard to shine as successful business builders themselves.

Our first profile is on Dr Danuta Jeziorska, co-founder of Innovation Forum Oxford and CEO of Nucleome Therapeutics. Read more here.

Lessons wrapped in Failure; ACE Saturdays reframe entrepreneurial pitfalls

Are you an early career scientist held back from exploring that enticing entrepreneurial space outside your lab by fear of failure?

Are you someone who is more familiar with innovating beyond the bench but finds the rarely trodden theme of learning from failure an enticing topic?

Then Innovation Forum Oxford’s ACE Saturdays 2020 series is for you.

The founding premise of ACE Saturdays has been ‘learning by doing.’ The series of workshops focusses on addressing core innovation and entrepreneurship themes and are both immersive and novel: offering a different, but complementary, perspective to introductory business toolkits previously offered by IFO (find out more from 2018 and 2019) and continue to be offered in the rich Oxford ecosystem.

ACE Saturdays 2020 is a series of a two-hour virtual ‘capsule workshops’ that will highlight tested paths to a smoother start of a venture by (positively) exploring failure.

The programme includes learning from failure in the following scenarios:

7^th Nov 2020 — Hesitating to expand your entrepreneurial horizons as a scientist, with Dr Alan Roth. More Info
5^th Dec 2020 — Undervaluing the impact your EQ has on your success, with Philip Gimmack. REGISTER HERE (You can read a guest post on the importance of EQ from Philip here)
16^th Jan 2021 — Unknowingly neglecting your end-user’s take on your solution, Sara Mosleh. REGISTER HERE
6^th Feb 2021 — Reactively rushing to IP your idea, with Dr Nessa Carey. REGISTER HERE.
27^thFeb 2021 — Lacking the grounding of Innovation Strategy, Michele Scataglini and Nigel Greenhill, INSTA Associates. REGISTER HERE.
24^th Apr 2021 — Failure to experiment, adapt, and iterate your business concept, with Angela Hobbs and Paul Inness. REGISTER HERE.

Stay tuned for further details and more workshops.

You can register for all or individual sessions as your time and your skillset dictate.

Why did we choose failure to anchor our series, you wonder?

Fail fast fail cheap; perfection is the enemy of progress; the 80/20 principle; all evoke an entrepreneurial mindset that champions what may seem like actively setting yourself up for failure. For a risk-averse high-achiever, the type we encounter in academic research, this is ‘no go’ zone.

Failure is another word for education; this is what we will strive to demonstrate in the ACE Saturdays 2020. We have become aware that reframing failure as education only comes with education. Understanding that barriers to accepting failure reside partly in the emotions it triggers; one of which is vulnerability— a feeling we are wired to avoid at all costs.

In all walks of life, tripping over when we think we are prepared and safe can at best unsettle us, and at worse inhibit us from ever trying again. This is where owning our vulnerability is the only way to try again. As scientists, we are constantly reminded of our vulnerability. Failure is the backbone of a project; a relentless repeat of ‘experiments gone wrong’ either practically or conceptually. Yet, there is no incentive to publishing such records -negative results- despite the fact they are the catalyst to our discoveries, the basis for our troubleshooting, and the essence of our creative solutions. This is a topic for another day. However, we all agree that only if shared, can these experiences become avoidable paths and no longer a drain to our resources. Only then, will our collective efforts become more efficient in propelling us forward, both at the individual level and as a community.

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable but they are never weakness. Vulnerability is not about winning and losing. It is about showing up even when you cannot control the outcome.” Brene Brown.

In the world of entrepreneurship, taking ownership of an idea and seeing it through to a real-world solution is a similar path: long, winding, and fraught with risk and uncertainty. A start-up founder is not a job, it is a way of life that revolves around believing passionately in an idea and finding a supportive ecosystem to build, test, and iterate. This cycle can be seen as “try, fail, and quit” if not done in a safe environment; one where vulnerability becomes a segue to greater success.

Part of the preparation necessary to sit comfortably with the possibility of failure is knowing that on the other side of failure a positive outcome awaits. This comes with experience. An even better start is learning from the wisdom of the generous few who share their failures and provide you with tricks and tools they have learnt as they ‘rewired their flops’ (Brene Brown) and reframed failures as nudges to readjust and iterate, or to pivot and reinitiate.

In a world of deceitfully ‘curated perfection’ as author and journalist Elizabeth Day puts it, ‘learning how to fail is learning how to succeed better’.

This is what ACE Saturdays 2020 is here for! Join us and learn how to succeed better.

Innovation Forum Oxford Inside Story: UCL Ventura COVID-19 Breathing Aid

Update: This piece was originally published in 2020. One year on (Apr 2021) the UCL-Ventura device is now in use across UK hospitals and the designs have been distributed to over 100 countries internationally. A recent UK aid shipment to India included 100 UCL-Ventura devices.

An overdue ‘insider’ story to tell: our own Innovation Forum Oxford vice-president, biomedical engineer Tom Peach, is part of the team behind the UCL Ventura Breathing Aid that is being used to treat COVID-19 patients in the NHS and internationally. Earlier this summer we interviewed Tom to hear his insider’s view on what COVID-19 innovation looks like. For our own innovation community, this is an an exemplar of interdisciplinary collaboration and a showcase of innovation in a crisis at its best!

Interview by Nanki Singh and Amrit Sami, June 2020.

Tom’s academic choices and career path encapsulate the Innovation Forum spirit of, as he puts it, capturing “the best of both worlds” — referring to bridging academia and industry. He believes in the importance of pursuing a “good enough” idea that makes its way to a useful real-world application over the “perfect theoretical solution” that gets shelved and may never bring the respective field forward.

In this interview Tom tells the tale of the 100-hour deadline to prototype the breathing device; a journey that began at a café close to UCL (University College London). Over an afternoon coffee he and colleagues met clinicians from UCLH (University College London Hospital) to inspect some ‘old’ pieces of equipment that would end up being the inspiration and building blocks for the UCL Ventura. Only after sawing apart what transpired to be ‘museum-borrowed’ pieces (shock horror), they repurposed and brought to modernity an old design concept with the clinicians’ invaluable insights, the biomedical engineers’ laser-focussed expertise, and the state-of-the-art manufacturing of Mercedes-AMG.

From afternoon tea, to a prototype, to a regulator-approved device — this is a tale of an unprecedentedly efficient response to a world-threatening crisis; a 10-day marathon that showcases how longstanding relationships between UCL academic departments, UCLH, and an industry giant, could unite top talents and produce a lifesaving solution that is now used in more than 100 NHS hospitals across the country.

There are lots of lessons to be learnt from the project; Tom champions the mantra of ‘let’s chat, build and test more’. This is an ethos that many capable academic institutions are striving to nurture, including here in Oxford, where the local ecosystem has not disappointed during these challenging times — including the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

At Innovation Forum Oxford we believe that collaboration is the only way to uncover potential, discover capabilities, and bring more valuable solutions to life. In the academic world, we are trained to search for the reasons why something should not work; seek the approval of the whole room to move forward; or to keep our gaze inwards and claim originality. This particular experience inspired Tom, and confirmed his views on entrepreneurship; open-up your horizons; reach-out to people outside your ‘usual’ circle; build long-term relationships that you can call upon for collaborations when the time is right; let your belief in your imperfect idea drive you AND your TEAM; and ‘Go for it’. Finally, he cautions to temper enthusiasm with a little bit of academic doubt (or shall we say critical thinking) to seek out solutions and refinements from diverse minds on the way!

You can learn more about the UCL Ventura project in a recent Youtube Live webinar here.

Music credit: Royalty free from Bensound

A.C.E. Saturdays 2019 – The BioEscalator Business Toolkit

Innovation Forum Oxford, in collaboration with the BioEscalator, brings back another instalment of the A.C.E. Saturdays program, a series of five workshops delivering the basic business skills through “learning by doing”. Designed to benefit the Oxford academic, clinical and start-up communities, the workshops tackle fundamental topics (as detailed below) whilst allowing exchange of participants’ unique experiences and perspectives.

Follow the links below to register for one or more events, depending on your interests and needs:

1- LEGO Serious Play (creativity and team work) – 8th June, 9.30am-2.30pm

A fun workshop that harnesses creativity and teamwork while playing LEGO. This professionally facilitated workshop will equip participants with tricks and tools that help in externalising and sharing new ideas in a safe space, with no judgement.

2- Pitching to Investors (Pitching)- 15th June, 9.30am-1.30pm

Participants will leave with a structured process for preparing a pitch, an understanding of the elements that make a great pitch, and insights into their own personal style. The session will close with opportunity to receive feedback on a personal pitch.

3- Idea Arc-Innovate (novel Value Proposition extraction canvas) – 22nd June, 9.30am-6pm

This workshop introduces the Idea Arc—a canvas-based innovation tool for facilitating team-based discussions, elaboration, and refinement of innovative ideas so that these can be understood and evaluated more easily.

4- Negotiation (diagnostic, role play, simulation, evaluation) – 6th July, 9.30am-6pm

This highly interactive and engaging workshop will offer insight into one of the most sought-after skill amongst start-up founders and science entrepreneurs: negotiation. Negotiation can make or break an early-stage venture. Successful negotiations require self-awareness and confidence as well as strategies and tools to deal with the wide array of stakeholders involved, tools only acquired through “Learning by doing”.

5- Strategy for Start-ups (Business Strategy) – 13th July, 9.30am-6pm

In this round-up workshop participants will: (1) understand and apply key strategy tools for developing their business; (2) familiarize themselves with the main risks for start-ups and understand mitigation approaches; (3) better understand the expectations and language of investors and buyers.

The A.C.E. 2019 format, diversity of participants, and bespoke tools developed by seasoned experts will bring fresh perspectives to familiar topics in the Oxford innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.

About A.C.E Saturdays

Innovation Forum Oxford (IFO) initiated the A.C.E. (Awareness, Connectivity, Exchange) Saturdays project in 2018. It was a series of four workshops aimed at nurturing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship amongst academic and clinical researchers at the University of Oxford. In 2018, the series focused on the human-centric Design Thinking process. The session placed particular emphasis on the interaction and knowledge exchange between the University of Oxford research community and “the outside world”. The series attracted more than 120 participants, was delivered by seven experts, and was supported by an industry partner (Triteq), a charity (Thinking of Oscar) and financed by the University of Oxford Knowledge Exchange Seed Fund, the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre and the Oxford University Careers Service. The feedback on all workshops was excellent. The appreciation for a platform that invites academic and clinical researchers to interact with participants from outside of the University (industry, consultants, NHS staff, innovators and entrepreneurs) was enthusiastically welcomed.

IFO will continue to offer the A.C.E. Saturdays projects with topics and formats that suit the time, place, and needs of participants. The quality of the workshops we are offering contributes to building a tractable and recognizable brand within our ecosystem; we intend to harness it to collaborate with innovation and entrepreneurship stakeholders to deliver exciting and valuable projects locally and beyond.

This 2019 series is supported by the Oxford BioEscalator, the University of Oxford KE Seed Fund, MRC Proximity to Discovery fund, and the University of Oxford Medical Sciences Division.

The A.C.E Saturdays Program; A Starter Toolkit for Science Entrepreneurs

In our academic community, we lack no creativity, ability, or character to innovate and be entrepreneurial. We only need a nudge in the right direction, a starter business toolkit for a kickstart, and most importantly a nurturing ecosystem to provide the appropriate support. Innovation Forum Oxford had the pleasure to be initiators in the Oxford ecosystem, providing inspiration, knowledge, and network to academic and clinical researchers as well as science entrepreneurs to engage effectively with the entrepreneurial space and act on their interest to create impact beyond the bounds of their current roles

When IFO delivered the Health and Life Sciences Entrepreneurship lecture series in 2016-2017, curiosity and eagerness among the Oxford academic community for exploring themes that interface life sciences and entrepreneurship became very clear. We have identified through participants’ feedback and direct interactions with IFO supporters that two main stumbling blocks hinder academics’ fruitful engagement with entrepreneurial activities: the need for basic business skill-set and the opportunity to interact in an immersive environment with like-minded science entrepreneurs to engage with the entrepreneurial community. Interestingly, short networking sessions following events are not effective enough for initiating contacts and building relationships—something very much reinforced by our own experiences.

As such, we wanted to create a training platform that addresses these points by providing “learning by doing” workshops. We envisioned a space where attendees acquire tools that awaken their creativity, hone problem-solving skills in teams, introduce business understanding, and tailor communication skills to non-academic audiences.

This is how A.C.E (Awareness, Connectivity, Exchange) Saturdays came about.

We believe that it is not only what you know and learn, it is how you position it, with whom you share it, and how you use it, that makes the difference. We created a platform for Awareness where participants explored the relevance and value of their learning, ideas and skills in a particular topic or field; Connectivity where participants enjoyed various perspectives outside their usual circles; and Exchange where attendees could share their knowledge and skills to synergistically tackle challenges in each workshop. A.C.E Saturdays became a platform that unlocked innovative potential, and provided an environment primed for relationship-building, skill-exchange and follow-on opportunities. Most importantly, it offered experiential activities that extended from half to full days to allow for all these processes of learning, sharing, and exploring to happen.

In 2018, the series focused on Design Thinking process; a human-centric problem-solving tool, prolific in the innovation and entrepreneurship circles, and a valuable too to introduce to the Oxford ecosystem. Both workshops (Oxford as a Future City and Innovation in Child Health Hackathon) were intended to disrupt silo-ed perspective of researchers, clinicians, businesspeople, patients, residents or end-users in the Oxford ecosystem. These workshops highlighted to academics and experts the value of building innovation projects with stakeholder inclusion at their core.

Another major challenge hindering collaboration and idea exchange was the inability to communicate ideas across barriers; academics and “the outside world” speaking “different languages”. We found that workshops tackling presentation and communication were far more effective when considering different audiences and frameworks. This perspective was explored in the “Pitching yourself” and “Health and Life Sciences Consulting” workshops in the series.

Returning for 2019, the series focuses on academic/start-up engagement. It brings together researchers and start-up companies to together tackle diverse topics, whilst allowing the exchange of unique experiences and perspectives within the sessions. In collaboration with the Oxford BioEscalator, we have crafted a business toolkit for start-ups; the BioEscalator Business Toolkit. As part of this series we will provide five workshops that together build the crucial starter toolkit for innovative academics and early-stage entrepreneurs. More importantly, the topics covered will help participants in navigating and appreciating teamwork; focussing on relationship building; considering all aspects of creativity and idea externalization, whilst strategising and communicating business plans.

In our academic community, we lack no creativity, ability, or character to innovate and be entrepreneurial. We only need a nudge in the right direction, a well-equipped but basic toolkit to give a kickstart, and most importantly the right people to provide the appropriate support. Innovation Forum Oxford has had the pleasure to be initiators in the Oxford ecosystem, striving to inspire, nurture, empower and enable academics and science entrepreneurs to engage in the process of creating impact beyond traditional research.

The A.C.E Saturdays 2018 was hosted and supported by the Oxford University Careers Service, the Oxford Knowledge Exchange Seed Fund, the Oxford University Medical Sciences Division, and the Oxford Biomedical Research Center. We also partnered with Triteq and Thinking of Oscar.

Select your branch

Author: Dr Mira Kassouf