The Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub

The Royal Academy of Engineering is establishing an Enterprise Hub to bring about a step change in the success of high-potential UK-based entrepreneurial technology businesses and the contribution that they make to UK economic growth.

The Enterprise Hub will harness the extraordinary expertise, insight and networks of Academy Fellows, who include some of the UK’s most successful technology entrepreneurs and business leaders. It will:

• Identify, mentor and develop high potential entrepreneurs with great propositions;

• Accelerate access to finance and routes to market;

• Celebrate UK success stories; and

• Deliver authoritative, independent policy advice to improve the UK climate for entrepreneurship and growth.

Why has the Academy decided to do this?

Who is the Hub for?

What activities will the Hub undertake?

How can I get involved?

Why has the Academy decided to do this?

Supporting faster and more balanced UK economic growth is the Academy’s number one strategic priority. The Academy has a long history of supporting industrially-focussed research in UK universities and celebrating engineering innovation and commercial success through prizes such as the MacRobert Award.

It also has an extraordinary resource in the form of its Fellows, many of whom have personal experience of funding, founding, building and leading a wide range of highly successful businesses. Collectively, they provide extensive corporate and international networks and knowledge that embrace routes to market, investors and deep market and technology intelligence.

Academy Fellows give their time and expertise to Academy activities pro bono and to date more than 70 Fellows with directly relevant expertise have volunteered an average of over one day per month towards Hub activities – a total of 840 volunteer days per year. It is expected that this number could more than double as the Hub becomes established.

The key principles that have guided the development of the Hub are as follows:

• The basis of the offering must reflect the unique combination of expertise, experience and networks embodied in the Fellowship

• In keeping with the Academy’s role as a national academy, the Hub should focus on excellence rather than volume.

• The Hub should occupy ‘white space’ and target the main points of market failure. These can be summarised as start-up, progression from proof-of-concept to commercial readiness and growth acceleration to realise full exploitation potential.

The development of the Hub is being guided by the Academy’s Enterprise Committee, which is chaired by Ian Shott CBE FREng (41KB).

Who is the Hub for?

For entrepreneurs: The Hub offers ambitious and capable engineering and technology entrepreneurs an exceptional opportunity:

• Recognition, credibility and increased profile

• Access to networks including potential investors and corporate partners, both UK-based and international

• Mentoring, support and advice from some of the UK’s most successful technology entrepreneurs and engineering business leaders

• Peer support from the other Enterprise Hub affiliate businesses.

For investors: By effectively cherry picking the best technology start-ups and SMEs and giving them the backing of elite mentors, the Academy aims to remove substantial risk from investment transactions. A significant number of investors have already expressed a desire to collaborate with the Hub and from the clusters of investors already engaged it is anticipated that funds in excess of £1bn could, under the right circumstances, be available for deployment by businesses affiliated with the Enterprise Hub.

For policy makers: The Hub will be a source of independent, expert advice on matters concerning innovation and entrepreneurship and the contribution that they make to UK economic growth.

What activities will the Hub undertake?

Current Hub activities are listed below. New activities will be added during the coming months.

Enterprise Fellowships: This BIS-funded programme provides £85k in seed funding and salary support, along with mentoring, training and networking opportunities, to enable entrepreneurial academic engineering researchers to spend a year focusing on starting a business.

Competitions and Awards: Several of the awards in the Academy’s portfolio recognise innovation and entrepreneurship, including the MacRobert Award, Silver Medals and ERA Foundation Entrepreneurs Award.

The Academy also runs the Innovation Hothouse, a competition aimed at stimulating commercialisation of final year student design projects

Enterprise Hub Meeting Place – Once fully operational, this programme of enterprise-focused events will comprise a major annual meeting followed by smaller quarterly meetings. The first annual meeting, the Hub Launch Event took place on 29 April 2013.

How can I get involved?

If you are a company or entrepreneur, please look at the activities pages (see section above) to see whether you are eligible for any of our current programmes or awards. New activities will be added during the course of this year.

If you are an investor or corporate that is interested in working with the Hub, please contact Enterprise.