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Impact story: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS)
The innovation potential of research in AHSS is having its moment in conversations around the impact of UK universities.
At Cambridge Enterprise, our strategic investment in the AHSS since 2018 has already produced outstanding results – a large and growing portfolio of technologies, interventions, tools and expertise, which are now beginning to prove their value as they come to market. The University has deep strengths in its AHSS research base, however, these subject areas have several special characteristics that challenge our traditional models and approaches.
Research commercialisation in the AHSS requires things to be done differently. Challenges remain in bridging the gaps between STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and AHSS disciplines and between changemakers within and outside the University. Our wide-open approach to supporting innovation at its very earliest stages of inception recognises that AHSS innovators may have fewer role models and mentors, and therefore face a relatively untrodden pathway to commercialisation.
Opportunities linked to the AHSS are often not based on formal IP licensing but are enabled by innovative and fast-moving business propositions, including data and software services, social enterprise, commercial R&D partnerships and franchising. While STEM disciplines may sometimes appear to have a monopoly on inventiveness, AHSS disciplines have an equally strong claim in the realm of creativity – crucial to true innovation. Through the Creative Cambridge initiative we showcase the strength and depth of Cambridge’s creative ecosystem, which helps to connect academia with creative industries and foster collaboration.
The appetite for conversation in the space is significant. Creative Cambridge has engaged more than a hundred local stakeholders from Cambridge’s arts and heritage organisations, the gaming, fashion and creative technology sectors, social entrepreneurship platforms, local government and policymakers, and AHSS researchers each year. 2022 saw the creation of three new companies within the creative industries, including the generative AI architectural design spin-out Planarific. We see a promising future building on Cambridge’s pedigree in technology innovation, directed by the curiosity and passion of its AHSS researchers.
The CRoSS (Commercialisation of Research Out of Social Sciences) initiative is driving novel approaches to commercialisation of social sciences
Through the new CRoSS (Commercialisation of Research Out of Social Sciences) initiative, funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council, we work in partnership with the University’s Social Science Impact Team, leading novel approaches in social sciences commercialisation. CRoSS delivered an Impact Ideation Day and the Ideas Incubator, both of which prioritise science research as a starting point to develop commercial value propositions and pathways to impact. Our first cohort of CRoSS Fellows completed the Ideas Incubator to launch their projects at our Pitch-In Finale, where they presented their solutions in health innovation, AI safety, heritage preservation, education, the prevention of domestic violence and more to a community of supporters who were asked how they might support our fledgling projects to deliver real-world impact.
It takes more than a village to combine industry insight and research evidence into innovation – it takes an ecosystem.
Annual Review 2022
This impact story was first published in the Cambridge Enterprise Annual Review 2022.
View our Annual Review 2022 to learn more about some of the exciting breakthroughs and innovations that we have been part of during 2021-2022.