We offer a continuous pipeline to scale up, making it easier to accelerate lab to market development.
By working in partnership, we provide businesses with the expertise, equipment, and energy to leverage opportunities. We also support start ups, early-stage and emerging companies in licensing IP and developing products, processes and profitable outputs, and help our academic talent to drive innovation through spin-out support and license agreements. In 2022/23 alone, our University received £25.6m research income from business to help accelerate innovation. Through these collaborations, we have developed initiatives to accelerate the translation of our research, in partnership with industry. These include:
Partnerships with industry
We accelerate innovation by working collaboratively. Examples include The Turing Innovation Catalyst Manchester (TICM), to accelerate Greater Manchester’s £5bn digital economy by supporting and creating start-ups, and Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Catalyst (IBIC), a consortium to harness the region's scientific and research expertise in engineering biology.
Innovation for partner companies
We establish initiatives to deliver innovation to partner companies, such as CRADLE, a new international research centre with Jacobs, co-funded through the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) Prosperity Partnerships program, and designed to create robotics and autonomous systems that will play a key role in the climate response.
UK-wide sector initiatives
We also support UK-wide partnerships to drive sector advancements, such as Advanced Machinery and Productivity Institute (AMPI), an industry-led initiative which will drive innovation for the UK’s advanced machinery designers, manufacturers and users
Where we’re heading is even greater: the creation of Sister, a trailblazing £1.7 billion innovation district covering over four million square feet, built in partnership with Bruntwood SciTech. Sister will deliver the specialist infrastructure needed to unlock and commercialise research and development, and create more than 10,000 new jobs over the next 10–15 years.
Our innovation ecosystem is strongly supported by a devolved regional civic authority and the ambition of its leadership. This includes the creation of Greater Manchester’s Atom Valley, which will provide further space and development land for scale-up.
By placing a focus on turning innovation into impact, from our home – Manchester, a city with strong transport links and the physical space to expand – we provide our partners with access to three components for growth: world-leading science and engineering research, a workforce enriched by Manchester graduates equipped with the skills to improve lives, and our strong translational support networks.
"Growing the UK economy will only come from innovation, and where does innovation come from? It comes from research and development. Therefore, we need to accelerate the translation of R&D from idea through to product, policy and process and make that as simple a path as possible for people, but also enable its acceleration. We are working with external organisations to pull some of these great ideas that are coming out of the research community into real products and services delivering tangible social, environmental and economic impact."
Professor Aline Miller, Associate Dean for Business Engagement and Innovation