Develop your skills & network

• Talk to the Careers Service, which provides resources for those wanting to set up ‘conventional’ businesses, such as restaurants, fitness centres and photographic studios.
• Speak with one of our Enterprise Champions, based within your Department, who act as the first point of contact for academics or researchers looking for advice on bringing their ideas and expertise to market.
• Go along to Enterprise Tuesday, a programme of free events run by the Judge Business School to introduce participants to the world of business, as well as to encourage and inspire individuals to pursue their entrepreneurial ambition.
• Have a look at the pathways to impact tool created by the University’s Research Strategy Office to help researchers plan their approach to creating impact from their research.
• Visit the University Enterprise Network, which acts as a portal to the various organisations involved in enterprise and innovation activities across the University.

Putting your research into context

• This 3-hour interactive online workshop gives you the tools to discover and communicate the broader context of your work when engaging with industry and business contacts

Business incubation

• Get in touch with ideaSpace, which provides office space and resources for anyone looking to start a new, high impact company in Cambridge.

Competitions

• Enter the Chris Abell Postdoc Business Plan Competition, which provides support and guidance to postdoctoral researchers looking to take their business ideas further.
• Enter Cambridge University Entrepreneurs’ (CUE) Ideas Take Flight competition; one of the world’s most successful business creation competitions, helping to support and accelerate entrepreneurship and innovation.

Experts and mentors

• Having practical experience and insight into the commercial landscape is highly valuable for those starting out on the journey towards commercialisation. Cambridge Enterprise boasts an impressive network of professional business experts and mentors. With a wealth of experience and knowledge, they will help to assist University academics and researchers commercialise their expertise and ideas for the benefit of the global community.

Start-up visas

• The Start-up visa is for graduates who demonstrate high entrepreneurial potential and wish to start a business in the UK for the first time.

• Cambridge University Entrepreneurs (CUE) supports and accelerates business innovation and entrepreneurship, and provides training. It also organises the Ideas Take Flight competition.
• Entrepreneurial Postdocs of Cambridge (EPOC) develop and deliver initiatives to support Cambridge researchers in their pursuit of business and entrepreneurial ventures.
• Postdocs of Cambridge (PdOC) is the University society for postdoctoral research staff and Junior Research Fellows (JRFs). PdOC represents postdocs in career development and contract research conditions.
• The Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club (CUTEC) is the leading student-run organisation at the University of Cambridge with a focus on technology venture capital.

• Academic Consultancy – The Fundamentals is a free online course from Cambridge Enterprise, explaining the benefits of sharing your knowledge and expertise with government, industry and the public sector by working with them as a paid consultant.
• Accelerate Cambridge is a programme run by the Judge Business School, which offers a structured approach of three-month programmes combining entrepreneurship training, regular coaching and mentoring, and access to shared workspace.
• Cambridge Social Ventures offers two main programmes – the Social Venture Weekend and a 12-month incubator programme – to support people who will drive their businesses forward to create real, scaleable, lasting social change.
• Ignite is an intensive, one-week training programme for aspiring entrepreneurs and corporate innovators to trial and prepare business ideas for the commercial environment.
• Impulse is a high-impact entrepreneurial learning programme for tech innovators that aims to foster entrepreneurial culture and mindsets, by increasing the skills and career options for researchers.
• i-Teams combines multi-disciplinary teams of students with industry mentors and real University inventions to assess the commercial viability of new technologies and product designs.