In July 2018 ICONS collaborated with the Knowledge&Tech Transfer (KTT) Unit of ICFO to bring to life a workshop on tech transfer and business development. The focus was on the process of creating and spinning out high-growth deep tech companies from scientific research. The workshop, sponsored by SPIE, consisted of two sessions. In the first session Sergi Ferrando, a Business Developer from KTT gave a brief introduction into the techniques applied by KTT@ICFO for the incubation of entrepreneurial projects and the mentoring of the scientific teams involved. The outline of the introduction was in the structure of a lean business model and included many real-life cases.
Subsequently, Alastair Cunningham, Project Portfolio Manager at KTT, presented two tech-based challenges, one on DNA data storage and the other one on Tribolectric power generation. Teams of three participants were formed and assigned to one of the two tech-challenge. The first session concluded with the announcement of the challenge for the second part, namely every team had to nominate one team member giving a 7-minutes pitch in front of a jury playing potential investors.
To be ready to pitch for investor money, every team had to come up with a solid strategy. How the teams would manage to effectively turn the given concept into a marketable product was totally free. The goal was to deliver a convincing pitch in front of the three jury members evaluating the pitch from the point of investors. Ideally the teams came up with a consistent business strategy based on the lean business model presented in the introduction. The teams were not completely left alone but could always seek advice from Sergi and Alastair from KTT.
A hectic and intense week for the part-time entrepreneurs followed…. And then it was FRIDAY afternoon and the second session started. The teams enthusiastically competed against each other, pitching their business plans to a jury in a grand finale. The winning team was Grain Data composed by Alex LeBon, Bárbara Buades and Marcos López. Eighteen ICFOnians took part in this workshop with mixed background and at different career stages, from Master students to postdocs and visiting scientists. The details of the workshop were developed by Sergi Ferrando, Alastair Cunningham and KTT’s director Silvia Carrasco, along with members of ICONS. Juan Miguel Pérez, ICONS former vice-president commented, “I firmly believe exercises like this are essential to our professional growth, by allowing us to expand our horizons and look beyond the four walls inside ourlabs. I hope this is just the beginning and this program continues to grow as years pass by.”
It was truly an inspiring experience to get a slight flavor of what all it takes to start as an entrepreneur. All the effort was rewarded by seeing the enthusiasm of every single participant and we really hope to be able to repeat such a hands-on workshop soon. For the moment we are very proud and happy, so we also chose this activity as our highlight for the 10-year celebration as SPIE chapter.
