Medici – A Midlands Success Story

Medici is an innovative Midlands-based 2 year programme to foster a climate of ENTREPRENEURSHIP in Universities. It aims to deliver a CULTURAL CHANGE that will boost commercial awareness, affect a more enterprising culture and support technology transfer within the institutions.

The programme began in September 2002, delivered through a consortium of five Midlands universities, namely Aston, Birmingham , Leicester, Nottingham and Warwick with Birmingham as the lead partner of the consortium.

The project aimed to encourage Fellows, working with the University's technology transfer office, to liaise with a range of companies and organisations, protect technologies and exploit them by collaborative research, licensing, forming spin-off companies and by developing commercial services within their University.

The pilot programme was completed in July 2004 having involved a network of 50 fellows over the partnership of 5 universities. The annual report published in July illustrated what a great success this initial project proved to be, with just some of the numerous achievements outlined below.

• £700,000 worth of Consultancy agreements
• Venture capital investments worth £500,000 for 2 separate spin out companies.
• £314,000 brought to universities through spin out companies and early stage grants (Spinner and Lachesis), BBSRC follow on grants, SMART awards and KTP awards.
• 21 patents filed with 19 more in progress.
• 11 technology licences with a further 13 in progress.
• 7 spin out companies incorporated and 15 companies are in progress.

As a result of this success, the project has been extended for two further years. Not only has the focus expanded from exclusively the Medicine and Biosciences areas, to include Technology and Creative Industries, but Medici has been awarded a grant of £4,000,000 under HEIF2 to extend to 94 fellows from 15 Midlands HEIs, namely Aston, Birmingham, Coventry, De Montfort, Keele, Leicester, Loughborough, Northampton, Nottingham, Nottingham Trent, Staffordshire, University College Worcester, University of Central England, Warwick and Wolverhampton. The expansion of this innovative project will ensure continued progressive development of entrepreneurship across the Midlands region as a whole.

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