Engineering news
The Royal Academy of Engineering will launch its Enterprise Hub next week. The hub will see fellows of the academy mentor engineering start-up firms to help them commercialise new technology.
Ian Shott, chair of the enterprise committee at the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: “Our vision for the hub is to seed a culture of success amongst the most ambitious and high-potential technology-intensive small firms in the UK.”
He added: “It will build their capabilities and provide them with essential connections to established financing and business clusters that offer access to finance and routes to market.”
Fellows will provide a long-term package of mentoring, training and bespoke support to the 'best of the best' early-stage companies. With the Enterprise Hub, the academy hopes to bring a step-change in the success of entrepreneurial technology businesses in the UK and boost the contribution that they make to economic growth.
More than 70 fellows with experience of founding and leading successful engineering businesses have agreed to take part. So far they have pledged 840 volunteer days per year and the scheme is expected to grow in the months to come.
Those who have volunteered include Dr Mike Lynch, co-founder of Autonomy, Sir Robin Saxby, former chief executive and chairman of ARM, and Professor Sir David Payne, director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton.
Ben Southworth, deputy chief executive of the Tech City investment organisation, said that the UK is doing an “exceptional job” of creating talented graduates, but many come out of university asking what to do next. “We need to talk more intelligently about how business works,” he said. “Often in the UK we see business as for someone else rather than us.”
The Enterprise Hub is one of a raft of measures to come out of the academy's Engineering for Growth campaign launched earlier this year.