Last week, I spent a few days in Zurich with my sister Bethan who teaches at an international school in the city. As most of you are aware, Zurich is famous as one of the global centres of investment banking but it is also home to several universities including ETH Zurich, one of the leading higher education institutions in the World.
It is somewhere I have waited to visit for a long time ever since I started my degree in physics at Cardiff University nearly forty years ago as it is where one of my heroes, Albert Einstein, studied and then taught as a professor of theoretical physics. Specialising in science and technology, ETH has achieved a top ten ranking in a range of disciplines including biological sciences, chemistry, computer science engineering, mathematics and, of course, physics.
However, according to the start-up community website Sifted, ETH has also succeeded in transferring this academic knowledge from the laboratory to the marketplace and has become the most successful spin-out university in Europe with 545 businesses having been created by academics and researchers from the university.
There seem to be several reasons for this including prizes for the best invention, dedicated office and laboratory space at a lower price than what would be found on the open market, strong links with incubators at technology and innovation parks, networking activities and community building through the ETH Entrepreneurship Club and the ETH Founders Community.
It has also created the Pioneer Fellowship, an 18-month support programme to help ambitious science and technology researchers develop entrepreneurial skills and turn the results of their master's thesis or PhD into investor-ready products. As part of this scheme, they receive £132,000 to support their business as well as extensive coaching, entrepreneurial training, and access to infrastructure.
As a result, some ground-breaking firms emerged from the university last year including a method for improved early detection of breast cancer (which was nominated for the European Patent Office’s 2022 Inventor Award), food tech ventures that are creating new alternative foods, and a digital business that can reduce the energy consumption of buildings by up to 30%.
The success of this programme and other developments within the local entrepreneurship ecosystem in Zurich has, according to the latest Global Startup Ecosystem report, seen the city make the biggest year-on-year improvement in Europe in supporting new businesses. It has also resulted in tripling in the number of unicorns (those firms with a billion-dollar valuation) in areas as diverse as healthtech and blockchain.
Unfortunately, there are very few extensive start-up ecosystems in the UK outside of London and very little investment into programmes by universities such as the Pioneer Fellowship which can help boost the amazing potential that exists within higher education.
Given this handicap, it was exciting to see three businesses from the University of Bath win their categories at this week’s South West Startup Awards which I founded last year.
These were Aerogel Core, a spin-off utilising cutting-edge materials research to create unique extremely lightweight multifunctional materials with unprecedented sound and thermal properties; Ecoze, winner of the graduate start-up of the year award developing the planet's most accurate environmental footprint tracker; and Ensilitech which has already raised £1.2m in pre-seed funding for its “fridgeless” technology that keeps vaccines at the right temperature during transportation.
And the importance of developing entrepreneurship within higher education was best demonstrated by Peequal, the South West Startup of the Year.
Founded after Bristol University students Hazel McShane and Amber Probyn were tasked with producing a solution to a real-world problem, the idea of a portable women's urinal was born based on their experience in long queues at music festivals.
Since then, Peequal has been used at six of the UK's favourite music festivals - including Glastonbury and Green Man - with research showing that 95% of women would use a women's urinal again.
It is an outstanding university spin-out and the combination of environmental design considerations, gender equality and empowerment that are driving its strategy suggests that the business has the potential to be disruptive on a large scale globally.
Therefore, from Zurich to Bath to Bristol, it’s great to see examples of academic research making an impact on the world in so many different ways although it is still the exception rather than the norm in many universities.
This can’t continue and given the enormous talent that exists amongst staff and students across the higher education sector, it is important that these incredible individuals that can help change the ways we live, work and play are given the full support necessary from governments, policymakers and vice-chancellors to release their entrepreneurial potential.
