This 1-day course explores how the two worlds of research and entrepreneurship overlap and how – through the application of a creative problem solving framework – business opportunities in research activity can be identified and progressed. This framework (which is also useful for streamlining the research activity itself) includes a number of tools and techniques that can help nurture a more creative mind-set that may be applied to both business development and research.

Areas covered:
-What is an entrepreneur?
-What do we mean by creativity and innovation?
-The research cycle and how it maps on to the practice of Entrepreneurship
-Drivers for innovation
-The Entrepreneurial skill set and the elements of business planning
-Creative problem solving and the generation of ideas
-A simulation on setting up a new business

Attendees will gain:
-Experience in exploring the business potential of their research in its widest sense (ie the research itself, the tools and techniques of the research, and their own tacit skills & knowledge)
-Experience in applying an idea-generation tool to a research field in order to identify new research and business opportunities
-Greater understanding of the skills of entrepreneurship and how these relate to research skills
-An understanding of the essential aspects of business development
-An understanding of visual business planning, including product definition, marketing, intellectual property rights and finance.