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About a year ago the two Sheffield Universities and
Sheffield City Council launched a £5.8m project, which includes a grant of close to £3m from the European Regional Development Fund, to expand their activities in spinning out new businesses. The programme, called Knowledge Starts in South Yorkshire, is advised by a board of six; Professors Diana Green and Bob Boucher (the two vice chancellors), Bob Kerslake, (the Chief Executive of the City Council), Brian James (the Managing Director of Business Link South Yorkshire) David Moody (the Chair of the South Yorkshire Investment Fund), and myself, Tim Cook (the Managing Director, Isis Innovation), so you can see that there is support from all the key organisations. A small executive team in the town hall, led by Mark Mawhinney, directs the project but the main action takes place in the Universities driven by Bob Anderson and Lloyd Snellgrove at Sheffield Hallam and Colin Whitehouse and David Catton at the University of Sheffield. I have spent the last five years spinning out companies from Oxford University, preceded by a few years running my own spinout, and I have no doubt that the research in Sheffield can lead to many such enterprises. I am grateful to the board for giving me the opportunity to participate and look forward to helping them open the throttle. I encourage researchers in the universities to have a word with their research and enterprise offices and I would also encourage those in the business community to invest some time finding out what is going on in Sheffield’s two fine Universities. There are some significant business opportunities.