Delegates from all of the consortia run by the Cambridge-based Centre for Business Innovation (CfBI) and invited guests worked together on challenges and opportunities which they are experiencing in the innovation landscape.
The third annual summit included a ‘Curated Startup Matching’ pre-event to Introduce inbound corporates to Cambridge startups and scaleups organised with the St John’s Innovation Centre. There were sessions on ‘Global Innovation Processes’ (chaired by Philip Guildford of the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering with discussion leaders from Amazon, Brightstar, DSTL and Jaguar Landrover), ‘Innovation with data’ (chaired by James Boyle of Taylor Vinters with discussion leaders from Amadeus Partners, Miotify, and HP Labs) and ‘Innovation Made in Cambridge’ (chaired by Haroon Ahmed, retired master of Corpus Christi College, with cameo presentations from AstraZeneca, ARM and Amazon), as well as table-top demonstrations from a number of Cambridge-based innovators introduced by Alex McCracken of Silicon Valley Bank.
The world-class networking opportunity culminated with dinner in Trinity Hall, addressed by Peter Cowley of Cambridge Angels on the theme of ‘Why Cambridge for Innovation?’
On adjacent days CfBI consortia for ‘Open Innovation Meets Big Data’, ‘Medical Adherence/Digital Health’, ‘Nano-Carbon Enhanced Materials’ and ‘Corporate Venturing Leadership’ met in private sessions in the Cambridge region.
Alex McCracken from Silicon Valley Bank commented: “it is pleasing to see large corporates collectively discussing their innovation processes and engaging with technology startups in Cambridge. Corporates are increasingly partnering with startups, which helps to stimulate the UK ecosystem. From our research in 2018, corporates participated in 42% of equity rounds of £10m-£200m roundsize in UK tech businesses” (data from Pitchbook).
Peter Hewkin, CEO of the Centre for Business Innovation, says: “We are delighted to bring together the members of CfBI’s eight international consortia in Cambridge (UK) each year to inspire, inform and engage them in one of the world’s best innovation clusters”.
Planning has already started for the next Cambridge Innovation Summit which will take place on 1st July 2020.
Image: Paul Misener of Amazon addresses Cambridge Innovation Summit 2019
About Silicon Valley Bank
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About CfBI
The Centre for Business Innovation (CfBI) is a new type of service organisation, headquartered in Cambridge, UK. It creates and facilitates communities whose participants work together in a trusting environment, towards common goals or under a brand which reflects their values and beliefs in order to 'do more with less' in the spirit of open innovation. CfBI’s team has been refining the formula for over fifteen years to help members all over the world to get optimum benefit.
CfBI continues to expand its portfolio of consortia (including ‘Microfluidics’, ‘Open Innovation meets Big Data’, ‘Corporate Venturing Leadership’, ‘Nano-Carbon Enhanced Materials’, ‘Medical Adherence’, ‘Distributed Ledger Technologies’, ‘Rapid Decarbonization’ and ‘Inclusive Design’) delivering “collaborative advantage” across Europe, the USA and beyond. Leading companies, government departments, research institutes and industry clusters, participate to derive benefit from accelerated learning, project cost sharing, influencing regulators, designing and promoting best practises, training as well as business development. Read more here
The annual Cambridge Innovation Summit is where all of the CfBI’s consortium members come together with invited guests to discuss and help to shape the innovation landscape.