A practical guide to finding the right university partner for your business: from defining your challenge, to posting a collaboration call on konfer, NCUB's free platform connecting businesses with UK universities. Step 1: Start with the challenge, not the solution Many collaborations stall because businesses arrive with a solution already picked out - "we need a machine learning model" - rather than the problem underneath it: "we're losing time to manual quality checks and w

How MoD-owned commercialisation partner to government, industry and academia is bringing defence-inspired innovations to market.

Drawing on experience from both industry and technology transfer, Dr Brendan Ludden, Oxford University Innovation Limited explains how option agreements and development licences enable businesses to access promising university innovations earlier, manage risk effectively, and build strong pathways to commercialisation.

Konfer works directly with universities and research institutions to support knowledge exchange, industry engagement, and research collaboration events - attending in person to introduce the platform where it is most relevant. Types of events konfer supports Konfer attends a range of university and innovation events, including: Internal research forums and departmental meetings University-business engagement days and industry showcases Knowledge exchange and partnership

Research infrastructure is one of the foundational pillars to the UK’s world-class strength in research. It is a national asset that supports researchers – not just from universities and academia, but from industry too – to undertake vital work which they otherwise would not be able to do. Last month NCUB submitted a response to the Public Accounts Committee on research infrastructure. It highlights that investment in research infrastructure, and the world-class strength of t

Whether you're looking to solve a technical challenge, access specialist labs, tap into cutting-edge research, or develop your workforce, the right university partnership can open doors that are hard to unlock any other way. If your business has never worked with a university before, the idea can sound more complicated than it is. Yet working with a university can give your business access to expertise, equipment, and research talent that would be difficult or expensive to