On 26 June 2024, I attended the Innovate UK Regional Investment Spotlight – Liverpool in the Manufacturing Technology Centre ("MTC") at the Liverpool Science Park. This was an opportunity for local authorities, investors, academics and UKRI staff to discuss the challenges and opportunities of scaling innovative businesses across the Liverpool City Region. I was invited because intellectual property issues were expected to arise.
We were welcomed to the MTC with a presentation on what it does and how it operates. We learnt that MTC is a research organization with branches at Coventry and Abingdon as well as Liverpool. It tackles complex manufacturing and business challenges driving solutions across more than 400 projects every year. It claims to excel in product innovation, digital transformation and sustainable manufacturing among other things.
This welcome was followed by a presentation on the UKRI. We learnt that it invests £8 billion of public funds every year into research and innovation. We were shown an organization chart and introduced to the work of each of its organs. We received an outline of UKRI's various funding programmes including its collaboration with the private sector.
There were several private equity investors in the audience. I asked one of them how they value companies whose only asset is likely to be a patent application and in many cases just an idea for a new product or business. The speaker told me that they value IP at nil and that they look to other criteria when making an investment decision. I got the impression that it was much easier to find investment for startups than for scale-ups.
There was not much discussion on what happens to successful scale-ups so I asked about flotations on the Alternative Investment Market. I was surprised to learn that that was no longer an option for growing companies and did not entirely understand the explanation as to why that should be.
There was a brief opportunity for networking at the end. I met a UKRI staff member who was concerned with agri-tech which was an opportunity to tell her about M-SParc and Aberinnovation's Clwstwr Agritech as mentioned in The Welsh Science Parls Agri-Tech Cluster. That conversation led to a discussion with another UKRI official who had been thinking of an Innovate Local event in Wales. He had thought of holding it in Newport or Cardiff so I invited him to consider M-SParc as a possible additional or alternative venue. For readers who are interested in agritch, I discussed plant breeders' rights which protect investment in new plant varieties in my June 2024 IP/IT Update Newsletter.
There was a brief opportunity for networking at the end. I met a UKRI staff member who was concerned with agri-tech which was an opportunity to tell her about M-SParc and Aberinnovation's Clwstwr Agritech as mentioned in The Welsh Science Parls Agri-Tech Cluster. That conversation led to a discussion with another UKRI official who had been thinking of an Innovate Local event in Wales. He had thought of holding it in Newport or Cardiff so I invited him to consider M-SParc as a possible additional or alternative venue. For readers who are interested in agritch, I discussed plant breeders' rights which protect investment in new plant varieties in my June 2024 IP/IT Update Newsletter.
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