Building on UBC’s strong track record in moving research to impact there is a desire to further improve and enhance how we support innovation services. UBC's notable achievements include supporting the creation of 270 spin-off companies, providing entrepreneurial education, establishing over 500 active licensing agreements, and enabling thousands of research partnerships each year with industry, government, and non-profit organizations. UBC spin-off companies have attracted over $4 billion in investment capital. Moreover, products stemming from UBC's intellectual property (IP) and venture building efforts have generated sales exceeding $13 billion.
It is with this in mind that we are excited to announce a number of significant changes to our support for researchers under Innovation UBC. These include:
Increasing the flexibility and the speed with which our sponsored research agreements are completed, as well as making the process more transparent for researchers with an online portal to track progress;
Accelerating the creation of spin-off companies, introducing new express licensing terms and templates that have been developed with input from industry and vetted with financial and legal partners;
Prioritizing research-based spin-off companies with expanded services to help in the early identification of innovation opportunities designed to meet research-based ventures where they are at.
A new Innovation UBC website has launched to better communicate and reflect the integrated delivery of sponsored research, commercialization, venture building and partnership services through Innovation UBC.
We acknowledge the work of our Advisory Council, which is representative of UBC researchers, faculty and staff, along with members of industry including venture capitalists, legal partners and business leaders, in continuing to provide input that will help us build on these new services. And finally, we have begun the process of reaching out to our faculty partners to share more details about these new services and identify opportunities to engage and collaborate. While the structural re-organization under Innovation UBC relates to units on the UBC Vancouver campus, the new services are available to all UBC researchers. We look forward to continuing to support the outstanding work of UBC’s research community.
Please feel free to contact J.P. Heale, Managing Director, Innovation UBC with any questions you might have.
