At the Open Coffee session on 20/March, Ed Chester from the Space IDEAS Hub introduced the range of short projects that they get involved with and the rationale for engaging and supporting small businesses. More information can be found at the homepage www.spaceideashub.com – but the starting point for most projects is a short conversation with each potential client. Want to meet up? Get in touch! If you have a known idea or challenge already, we can have our legal folks ensure confidentiality agreements are in place before you talk about your business.
A couple of great questions arose – what is the University of Leicester’s position with IP in such projects? how do projects get started? what happens if longer projects involving students arise? There isn’t a single stock answer for each project, but clearly we’ve tackled all these before. Our company engagement list exceeds 250 businesses now. But a general comment about IP – the University’s core business is not your core business. It very probably does not have the capability or the interest to commercialise IP related to your activities, but it wants to see that exploitation occurring – so expects you to do it, and does not want to put barriers in the way of that happening.