The Royal Agricultural Hall in London has shifted through many roles over the years. One of the largest exhibition halls on the planet when it was constructed in 1862, both the Royal Tournament, the world’s largest military tattoo exhibition until it ended in 1999, and the internationally famous Crufts dog show held their inaugural events in the building. In the Second World War, it became a parcels depot for London, before becoming the Business Design Centre in 1986.
Now, the building retains the feel of an indoor market, but where you would normally expect grocers, greasy spoon cafes, and a range of goods on the cheap, the building is littered with startups and other businesses on the up. It is here, in this exhibition-hall-come-startup-space that you will find a small office looking to have a massive impact on knowledge transfer. Walk past the tech firms, small offices and startup electronics firms, and nuzzled right at the back of the Business Design Centre is the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN).
Itself a spin-out of the UK government’s Innovate UK – formerly the Technology Strategy Board – the KTN was established last April to connect the dots of the sporadic and fragmented UK innovation network.
Despite the great work undertaken by academia, corporates, and entrepreneurs in the UK to support the development of ideas into businesses, the country still suffers from a lack of communication between individuals, organisations and clusters all engaged in the same innovative work. It is by no means a UK-specific problem. Travel to the US, to China, to Europe, and the story is the same. There will be underutilised technologies, startups missing a crucial pillar to their success, and an overall lack of connectivity which stifles economic growth.
That is not to say there are not already efforts to collaborate, with numerous efforts to combine forces and strengthen the network taking place. However, it can always be done better. There might be a patent lying in Newcastle University that would make a transport company in Kent’s day, or faculty members in Edinburgh who would have ideas that could transform a biotech in Cardiff’s growing life sciences hub, or a graphene startup in Manchester that could scale up only with the support of an electronics firm in Cambridge. But without strong foundations of communication, the two resources will never meet, and the billion-dollar company that could come from it will never come to pass.
That is where the KTN comes in. The grant-funded not-for-profit organisation has been working tirelessly for the past year to build the connected infrastructure the UK needs to facilitate the free flow of ideas and contacts. In order to achieve this, the KTN has a multi-prong attack.
First, the KTN has identified 15 specific priority areas in the UK to support. They are bioscience, advanced materials, built environment, resource efficiency, digital services, electronics and photonics, energy, food supply, healthcare, high-value manufacturing, ICT, space and transport. Each of these areas has a dedicated expert in the KTN office who has his or her fingers on the pulse of that sector. Each expert is there with the mission to build research-industry collaborations within those sectors, and is supported in this endeavour by an online platform. On the platform, each sector is given its own space on the site, which provides news and coming events. The KTN’s online offering is backed by a social network – not too dissimilar to LinkedIn – which links KTN members with others in their fields.
Another area in which the KTN excels is providing the forums in which its members can meet and network. The KTN is hosting upwards of 350 events a year in the UK, held around the country and focusing on each of the key 15 sectors. Much like its online offering, the KTN’s events are focused on design, and seek to engage innovators with their user bases as well as knowledge transfer managers to boost design philosophy.
The third branch of the KTN’s work entails connecting businesses with funding opportunities. Alongside providing information on access to banking finance, the KTN also provides leads to Innovate UK funding, such as the TSB Competitions Search and Smart Awards, as well as the Small Business Research Initiative and similar schemes. It also opens the door to funding from Research Councils UK, such as the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The KTN also works with Wellcome Trust and Bioventures in the UK, as well as engaging a number of angel networks to provide access to early-stage funding.
One of the KTN’s key funding instruments in the Venturefest Network, run alongside Innovate UK, which organises its own events and looks to strengthen connectivity between innovators and investors. The events give startups the opportunity to promote their businesses with the aim of accessing funding from the KTN’s national partners.
Also, despite being UK-focused, the KTN also has an international outlook, and will connect to individuals, investors and innovators in Europe to fulfil its goals, and partners funding schemes in the EU such as Horizon 2020 and Eureka Eurostars to boost UK startups and research.
The KTN has attracted more than 5,000 members within a year, and has already made its mark on connectivity in the innovation ecosystem in the UK. Although it might not have the history of the Business Design Centre, the KTN is mirroring its home building’s lineage of showcasing British talent and ingenuity while adapting itself to fulfil the country’s needs.