The project is developing a centralised directory of SHAPE ventures to foster collaboration and innovation. This resource will provide insights, highlight commercialisation examples, and connect academics and industry professionals across Aspect member institutions.
The SHAPE Ventures Directory highlights the broad spectrum of mission driven initiatives arising from SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts) research in universities across the UK.
From legally incorporated businesses to pre-incorporated, internal university business units, consultancies, and enterprising programmes, SHAPE ventures demonstrate innovative approaches to translating research into economic and social impact.
Through diverse business models and non-traditional commercialisation pathways, these ventures exemplify the unique value of SHAPE disciplines in driving societal change.
Designed as a resource for commercialisation professionals (those supporting SHAPE initiatives), this directory offers a platform for sharing snapshots of projects, connecting peers, and discovering the extensive SHAPE-led enterprise landscape nationally.
How Can Members Get Involved?
Members can add data to the directory, use it as a resource for inspiration and collaboration, and participate in promotional activities and events showcasing its utility.
This project aims to support SHAPE academics in developing and distributing games by mapping their needs and existing university resources. It will create a resource for connecting with developers, publishers, and distributors, and organise an event to foster industry partnerships.
How Can Members Get Involved?
Members can participate in the survey to share their needs, attend the networking event, and contribute to developing the resource and distribution strategy.
This project focuses on improving the visibility and relevance of Aspect’s microsites, such as the Games Hub, by updating content and creating a strategy for long-term sustainability. It aims to promote underutilised training resources and ensure ongoing community engagement.
How Can Members Get Involved?
Members can participate in surveys and workshops to identify barriers and opportunities for using the microsites. They can also use the revamped resources and provide feedback for continuous improvement.
The project explores the barriers to arts-based ventures spinning out from universities. It will identify challenges such as institutional resistance due to unclear intellectual property (IP) structures and consultancy-based business models. The team will engage with academics and professional services to create policies and pathways to encourage spinouts in arts subjects like performing arts and film/media.
How Can Members Get Involved?
Members can participate in surveys, focus groups, and roundtable discussions during the research phase. Outputs such as policy documents and a playbook will be available to guide and inspire further actions in their institutions.
This project is conducting a UK mapping exercise to identify CEOs within SHAPE ventures. It aims to create a database of CEOs who could lead SHAPE spinouts or mentor future leaders. This will address the challenge of finding executives passionate about SHAPE research to enhance commercialisation opportunities.
How Can Members Get Involved?
Members can contribute by sharing information on potential candidates and engaging in stakeholder discussions to refine the database. The final report and database will be accessible for collaboration and mentorship between Aspect members.
The project is developing the groundwork for a comprehensive SHAPE spinout guide. It will identify gaps in current guidance and propose a framework for drafting a SHAPE-specific guide to support universities in spinning out research ventures.
How Can Members Get Involved?
Members can respond to survey questions about the guidance they currently use and where they feel different or additional guidance would help them support SHAPE spinouts, and provide feedback on draft outputs. There will be opportunities to feed into the wider Aspect work to draft and finalise a new SHAPE spinout guide, informed by this testbed project.
Aspect has achieved significant milestones since its inception five years ago. As it progresses towards its latest phase, marked by the introduction of a new funding model, Aspect aims to accomplish three primary objectives:
Showcasing Impact Achievements: Over the past years, Aspect has made remarkable strides in fostering SHAPE commercialisation. Through collaborative efforts with 50 higher education institutions and partner organisations, it has built an ecosystem supporting the emergence of new commercial opportunities from SHAPE research.
Highlighting Future Potential: The programme underscores the existing and potential impact of SHAPE commercialisation. By nurturing relevant capacity and skills, sharing knowledge, and addressing challenges and opportunities in commercialisation, Aspect aspires to ensure SHAPE research significantly contributes to the UK economy and society.
Enhancing Impact Reporting: To reinforce the case for future funding and institutional participation, Aspect seeks to effectively capture and demonstrate the economic and social benefits derived from its initiatives. This entails a shift from focusing solely on activities and outputs to capturing outcomes and real-world impacts.
To achieve these goals, Aspect has undertaken a comprehensive review of its activity over the last few years, encompassing findings, insights, and recommendations across various dimensions. In this report, we go hunting for the strongest set of outcome proof points to ensure Aspect is able to fully demonstrate its impacts to critical audiences, including Members and new potential funders, includinG:
Impact Capture Methodology: Insights into the methodologies employed to capture and assess the impact of Aspect’s initiatives.
Pre-zero Point Impact Assessment: Evaluation of the impact achieved prior to the implementation of specific interventions.
Post-zero Point Impact Assessment: Assessment of the impact realised following the implementation of interventions and initiatives.
Comparison to Mature SHAPE Spin Outs: Comparative analysis with more established SHAPE spinouts to identify trends and best practices.
Lessons for SHAPE Commercialisation: Insights gleaned from Aspect’s experience to inform future strategies and approaches in SHAPE commercialisation.
Impact Reporting Conclusions and Future Approach: Conclusions drawn from the impact reporting exercise and recommendations for future reporting methodologies.
With this research in-hand Aspect aims to provide a robust framework for capturing, assessing, and reporting on the impact of its initiatives, thus paving the way for continued success and growth in SHAPE commercialisation.
A huge thank you to Campbell McDonald and Mark Mann from Divine Ox for conducting this research and producing the report.
The aim of phase 2 was to create a community of engaged academics, professional services staff and business in the games development ecosystem, and study market validation/ commercialisation routes via the the ‘Legally Wed’ project.
The aim of the Phase 3 extension is to increase awareness amongst SHAPE academics and professional staff about the potential and best practice in developing commercially viable outputs through games, through: populating a library of existing and new resources (webinars, game testing, toolkits, survey feedback etc.), facilitating discussion with its members and industry (events, workshops), and creating an online training course for those interested in converting their research into games.
The University of Glasgow split its funding from Aspect to support three initiatives: (1) Innovation Audit, (2) Entrepreneurship/ Challenge-led placements, and (3) Zinc and investor relationship building.
INNOVATION AUDIT
The Innovation Audit set out to uncover and develop existing research for innovation activity. The University IP & Innovation team ran these ‘audits’ in the STEM colleges regularly and began to look at how to adjust the model to work for SHAPE disciplines.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP/ CHALLENGE-LED PLACEMENTS
This part of the project aimed to empower SHAPE researchers to deploy entrepreneurial skills to short-term placements around specific challenges for business partners to develop the depth of private sector relationships with strategic partners alongside building innovation confidence in keen researchers.
ZINC & INVESTOR RELATIONSHIP BUILDING
Across SHAPE disciplines, the team recognised the need to grow a base of investors who understand the nuances of early-stage investment and how that differs from our STEM counterparts (i.e., often earlier stage and potentially lower growth but high societal good, different business models, etc), while helping shape suitable business models that excite investors. This part of the project enabled travel for both academics and professional support staff to attend Zinc events in London, providing a variety of options to catalyse innovative growth from research.
Seeding University Collaboration for Commercialisation and Enterprise in Social Sciences
The SUCCESS programme (now ARC) is a first-of-its-kind opportunity designed to help social scientists with innovative and marketable research ideas. This programme provided them with the training, support and funding to transform those ideas into a business or social enterprise. Successful applicants benefitted from support to build their idea, including a three-day bootcamp focused on imparting entrepreneurial skills, expert speakers and mentorship as well as the opportunity to pitch for up to £50,000 in prize money and investors.
