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SCIENCE NATION
NATION Innovation
AN INTEGRAL STREAM OF THE EUROSCIENCEOPENFORUM2012 (ESOF),SCIENCE-2-BUSINESSISA PROGRAMME OF WORKSHOPS FOCUSED ON THE PROCESS OF TURNING THE RESULTS OF PUB- LICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH INTO SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS INNOVA- TIONS. According to Prof Thomas Cooney of
Prof Thomas Cooney
The process of converting novel research outputs into successful business innovations is the focus of one the strands of this year’s Euroscience Open Forum conference
DIT, who’s chairing the Science-2- Business programme committee, the primary purpose of the initiative is to encourage delegates at the conference, who will primarily come from science engineering and technology (SET) backgrounds, to engage with the possi- bility of business. “Governments across the globe be-
lieve that innovative entrepreneurship offers the greatest potential for future economic growth and the ESOF 2012 Science-2-Business programmewill en- able delegates of all backgrounds to gather information and make valuable contacts no matterwhere they are cur- rently located on their entrepreneurial journey,” he says. “Some people will be in the early
stage of their careers, others will be more established. Somewill never have considered entrepreneurship or setting up their own business or commerciali- sation, while others might be consider- ing having a spin-out. Others will be coming from different countries with different stages of economic develop- ment. We’re going to have this very broad mix of people at different stages of their journeys andwewill offer them someway of exploring the notion of sci- ence to business.” Science-2-Business has been a strand
at other ESOF conferences, but the Dublin programme will be quite differ-
20 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 4 Spring/Summer 2012
ent and people will be able to engage with it in a range of ways, says Cooney. “Before, they were 15 workshops. Peo- plewould presentwhat theywere doing and others would listen. “The level of engagement and of in-
teraction between the SET community and the business community will be much higher and through a much greater variety of mechanism than would have been previously found at ESOF conferences.” According to Cooney, the 90-minute
workshops will be highly interactive, collaborative type sessions. “That al- lows people to discuss and talk about their issues, problems, strengths and weaknesses,” he explains. “We’ll also have visits to incubation
centres,we have the Marketplace Exhi- bition, and we have an Invention Con- vention, where delegates get three minutes to make a pitch to a panel of experts about their idea and how inno- vative it would be in the marketplace. They’ll get feedback on that from the experts and there’s a prize as well. That’s all done in public forum where others who are there can also benefit fromthe learning.” The programme will offer delegates
the opportunity to meet large organisa- tions – including, for example, Intel and IBM – to identify what these kinds of companies are looking for in terms of engaging with scientists, says Cooney. There will also be the chance to meet with smaller companies and to find out about industrial PhD programme op- portunities. “On top of that there is quite a num-
ber of advisory booths in the Market- place: intellectual property experts, venture capitalists, the support agen- cies and technology transfer officeswill
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