The tenth Enterprise Tuesday event was held at Norwich Research Park on Tuesday 10 March with the theme of Emerging Technologies in the East of England. The event which attracted a large audience of people from both on and off campus, showcased how emerging technologies can help to spearhead new innovations and create new opportunities for research and business.
We were delighted to welcome keynote speaker, Dr Ian Jepson, to share his experiences and insights. Ian spent ten years at Syngenta, one of the world’s leading agriculture companies, and was able to provide expert commentary on the agribiotech market from a global, US and corporate perspective; explaining what corporates look for when forming partnerships with early-stage companies.
Dr Nick Goodwin, COO, Anglia Innovation Partnership, presented on Harnessing Emerging Technology Through a Cluster where he defined what an emerging technology is and then outlined the approach Norwich Research Park has taken to generate and support emerging tech.
Prof Irene Papatheodoru, based on campus, and Head of Data Science at the Earlham Institute, presented on opportunities using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate life science discovery work and develop new innovations such as developing new crop varieties.
The second half of the conference brought together resident entrepreneurs for a fireside chat on emerging technologies and featured Murray Dare, Dr Ofir Meir, Dr Rachel Stanley and Matt Capp.
- Murray Dare, founder of new start-up Boone, which has recently moved to Norwich Research Park, has developed a soon-to-be launched app that is going to combine nutrition intelligence with individual’s genetics to help people to improve their diets in line with their own goals.
- Dr Ofir Meir, CEO and co-founder of QuberTech, previously CTO of Tropic, explained how his latest start-up is going to produce natural rubber from latex cultivated from the roots of dandelions which originated in Kazakhstan in soilless environments.
- Dr Rachel Stanley, Manager of the Norwich Research Park Biorepository, explained the role the biorepository plays in both academic and business research by storing samples of human tissue, blood and DNA in its speciality facility – one of the biggest in the UK – which supports vital research into the causes of diseases and the development of effective new treatments.
- Matt Capp, Manager of Adastral Park Strategy and Operations at the BT group, in Ipswich, took us on a virtual tour of the Suffolk cluster highlighting potential opportunities and synergy for his site and Norwich Research Park to work together.
A panel discussion followed, continuing the topic of Retaining Homegrown Emerging Technologies: the role of policy and investment which was inspired by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Report Bleeding to Death: the science and technology growth emergency.
The panel, chaired by Nick Goodwin included Paul Sullivan, Senior Manager UKN, British Business Bank, Amrit Sami, Investment Associate, Mercia Ventures, Stephanie Aldridge, Senior Innovation and Growth Specialist, Innovate UK, Laura Hood, Director of Operations, Anglia Capital Group, and Dr Ian Jepson, Principal Consultant, Jepson Advisors LLC, USA.
The panel discussed how start-ups should approach scale up investment. Amrit Sami, Investment Associate at Mercia Ventures said that he believed that UK companies are often too conservative in their approach to setting expectations about what they could potentially achieve and therefore he encouraged a more confident attitude and use story-telling techniques to ‘sell the vision’ of the potential for commercialisation.
Dr Ian Jepson added that it was important for founders, and their advisers, to recognise their skill gaps and to appoint individuals who have the required expertise and experience to give them the best chance of success and cited that three of the companies he advises in the UK have brought in, or are planning to bring in, a CEO from outside to drive forward their progress.
During the intervals guests were able to connect and network with a wide range of industry experts.
The AIP team received very positive feedback from the event:
“Excellent panel discussions with horizon scanning insight. Good networking opportunities in the morning.”
“I think these events are a brilliant showcase of what is happening (and the people) at Norwich Research Park. I have always enjoyed them.”
“I thought it was really well organised – it was easy for me to park, to set up meetings and to talk to people throughout the day. The talks were very interesting.”
Roz Bird, CEO of Anglia Innovation Partnership, said, “This is now the fourth year that we have held these Enterprise Showcase events, and they have gone from strength-to-strength. We always try to make them as topical as possible and to put on the platform what Norwich Research Park can offer both to academia and to the international business community.
“Technology is a central pillar of the research that is conducted across our campus, and I believe it was helpful to examine the new technologies, that are emerging and start to identify where the opportunities may lie.”
Our next Enterprise Showcase event will take place on Thursday 3rd July, stayed tuned for more information on the event launching soon.
To view the full gallery of images from the event, please visit our Event Gallery page.
