A UK university with the ambition to become one of the top business schools in the country commissioned us to redesign their startup and research commercialisation programme to be more impactful, generate more long-term success stories and be more cost effective after European funding came to an end post-Brexit.
Based on our research and programme design, they successfully secured £330,000 to implement the new model of support.
Here’s how we did it…
UK higher education institutions provide startup incubator and accelerator programmes to commercialise research, support graduate outcomes, engage the business community and contribute to the local economy. They are assessed on the strength of their programmes through the Knowledge Excellence Framework (KEF).
Typically, most universities were funding this activity stream through ERDF funding from the European Union. However, the final round of funding post-Brexit came to an end in 2021/22, leaving universities in the position of needing to find alternative funds or self-fund their programmes.
One university saw this as an opportunity to redesign their programme to achieve more successful startups and become the highest ranking in their KEF cluster.
They commissioned 181st Street to undertake a research project to design a ‘Best in Class’ enterprise programme for both student/graduate startups and the commercialisation of research.
We undertook a comparative study, assessing current support provision at the best performing universities in the UK (based on the Times league table, KEF clusters and best for number of successful startups per year and post 3 year survivability), and the other universities in the same cluster as the one that had commissioned us.
We broke support provision down into 7 stages:
- Engagement in Enterprise
- Pre-start engagement
- Pre-start skills development and ideation
- Startup (registration of company)
- Pre-launch/pre-funding
- Launch journey/second stage growth
- Post-launch/post-funding
Plus an additional assessment of specific support for research commercialisation.
We undertook a literature review of papers on best practice in student and graduate entrepreneurship, research interviews with staff and support providers at the commissioning university and other institutions, as well as graduate entrepreneurs who had participated in the programme, and assessed their KEF data submissions and publicly available information about their support programmes on their website.
From there we were able to determine key KPIs for the enterprise provision – the main one being 3 year startup survivability. While the national startup survivability rate is 57.6%, universities average between 15% and 40% survivability.
Most universities were focused on providing short term ‘sprints’ or isolated activities, but the most successful programmes focused on provision of enterprise skills throughout a student’s time at university and beyond. The programmes with the best engagement and survivability had a centralised hub for communications, external comms support and a hybrid model of in person and e-learning, along with strong regional networks, partnerships and the provision of funding grants.
Universities without a clear funding path and VC relationships had much lower survivability rates.
Based on our findings, we modelled a ‘Best in Class’ programme designed to meet Key Performance Metrics for the KEF, HESA, Times World University rankings, University Impact Rankings (aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals), AACSB Accreditation and the Small Business Charter.
We designed a best practice model of provision for each stage, including partnership networks, funding, coaching, training and communications plan to drive engagement.
From there we undertook a feasibility study to ensure that our recommendations could be practically implemented, and then designed 3 models of delivery: a physical presence model with heavy staffing requirements and a physical university innovation hub and co-working, a mixed provision model with a smaller central hub and less internal staff, and a digital first model with limited physical presence on campus, specialist provision from a coaching firm and a monthly retainer with a comms provider so that it could be staffed by one internal manager.
We then provided a cost analysis for each model, covering year 1 and set up costs, and then a 2+year forecast.
Based on our recommendations, the university restructured their provision and built a revised offer in partnership with other higher education institutions in the region, specialist third-party providers and the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), adopting the hybrid model we designed.
Since the publication of our research, the Business School has doubled the number of professors on staff, putting this expansion down to the ‘attractive offering’ and strong aspirations of the school. They also welcomed their largest ever student cohort.
They secured a fund of £330,000 from Research England to support the commercialisation of research and develop an innovative new startup programme based on the best practice models we suggested.
The Deputy Director of Research & Enterprise at the university said:
“The approach we will be adopting is genuinely novel and innovative in itself. Following the loss of European Regional Development Funding, this investment is a real boost to the local economy”.
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