Today the University of Bath will open a new innovation and enterprise space on campus to provide a space for student entrepreneurs, researchers and graduate startups to develop and share ideas for products and services, and to access support and mentoring.
Fostering entrepreneurship and innovation
The E-Lab is a significant expansion of the Enterprise services provided by the university, which offers a range of development and collaboration opportunities including support for startups, consultancy, securing investment, and access to expert research networks.
Numerous spin-out companies have been formed from University of Bath research and enterprise, including manufacturing software company Gen3D and bioelectronics company Ceryx Medical, which is developing an enhanced pacemaker. More information on the spin-out companies can be found here.
Professor Jonathan Knight, Vice President Enterprise tells us, “I’m delighted to see our plan for this valuable new space on campus come to fruition. It will serve to strengthen the stream of fledgling businesses emerging from our enterprising community, developing the innovation ecosystem that we are building within the city and the region. It will also provide a natural landing space for business engagement with the university. Co-location with some of our strongest research institutes is an added benefit.”
The E-Lab facilities can be used to support a variety of activities including one-to-one mentoring, specialist advice sessions, start-up workshops, guest speaker events, masterclasses, interviews with entrepreneurs and networking opportunities for students and academics. The university’s growing enterprise campus community can use the hotdesking facility for quiet working and access an open collaborative working space, as well as book private meeting rooms.
E-Lab will also provide a physical location for related University programmes and initiatives including the forthcoming ISTART partnership with Bath Spa University, Bath College and Bath and North East Somerset Council, which will help local people gain new skills and re-train for roles in the creative and digital sectors.
It will complement the University’s SETsquared Innovation Centre located in the city centre, which continues to support localised startup and scaleup businesses with a focus on high-tech, high growth SMEs.
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