The power of konfer – what’s not to like?

City St George’s, University of London strategic embedding of the konfer platform

Business and university collaboration is a powerful tool to tackle complex challenges, drive innovation, and support growth for UK plc. City St Georges aims to lead the charge in ensuring we maximise such collaborations and konfer has a significant role to play in our activities. 

Small businesses (SME’s), often struggle to gain access to expertise to help solve day to day challenges. The konfer platform offers an easy access one-stop-shop solution. Expertise and collaboration calls can be listed on the platform enabling partnering, knowledge exchange, access to cutting-edge facilities, specialised expertise and developing future talent. With opportunities being driven by either the business or university (or both) konfer offers outstanding potential project development opportunities. 

Ian Gibbs, Head of Academic Enterprise at City, St George’s University of London, immediately saw the potential of konfer:  ‘Konfer is a vital link in our development activities. Historically, many have attempted to develop such a match-making platform, but only konfer through NCUB have succeeded. City St Georges was an earlier adopter of Konfer and are now reaping myriad benefits. Institutions who engage with the platform will undoubtedly agree, Konfer is a vital tool, that actually works!’ 

Having posted over seventy collaborations on konfer, City St Georges have developed more than 200 valuable connections with industry and have received more than a hundred industry enquiries too, many of which have stimulated high potential knowledge exchange and tech transfer collaborations. 

Responding to business led enquiries 

Ms L Day’s role in Academic Enterprise is to build relationships with external organisations, generate revenue through collaborations with industry, alumni, donors and others thereby creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem. One further benefit of interacting through konfer includes accesses to new funding streams such as the Energy Innovation Centre, who post funded challenges on the platform. 

Ms Day says  ‘The konfer tool is easy to navigate. Through it, one can learn about the challenges faced by others and then introduce them the relevant expertise available at our university and elsewhere.’ 

Examples of companies working with the university through konfer are: 

• Solver-AI Ltd – A UK startup creating a cloud platform that helps businesses build and use AI decision systems without needing deep technical skills. After building a basic version of their product, they needed early users to help shape it. City St George students supported the project, gaining valuable experience, and discussions are ongoing to explore research collaborations with City. 

• Diverse Mental Health Ltd – A UK SME developing a web app using immersive tech to boost mental health and productivity. New to working with universities, they connected with City St Georges through konfer. They are now speaking with various teams at the university, including experts in immersive tech, funding, and knowledge transfer partnerships. 

• Famli – A UK tech company building a digital wellbeing platform to support children's mental health and encourage preventative care. They sought partners to help test and validate the platform's health impact. Although they lacked funding for research, City supported them in finding and applying for funding opportunities. 

Posting university led opportunities 

Using the focused ‘smart targeting’ functionality of konfer, the university have been able to post multiple requests for businesses to engage City St Georges. Successful postings have included securing placements for MSc computing students. You can read how a robotics student helped SME i3d robotics here. Supporting student centred collaborations is one of many benefits of engaging with konfer. 

When applying for government funding a City St Georges academic sourced over 40 collaborators in support of a significant funding opportunity. Both the konfer platform and konfer team were crucial in sourcing key collaborators, and within five-days a high-quality funding application was submitted. The support from the konfer team was outstanding. 

Embedding konfer at City St Georges 

The key to maximising konfer’s benefits is engagement, and as such at City St Georges we take this seriously. 

Academic Enterprise colleagues have run a number of events at the university to further raise awareness of the platforms benefits in showcasing the impact and benefits it has for academics. This is an ongoing and frequently repeated exercise the university undertakes. Tia Khan, in the IP & Commercialisation team commented ‘We are going from strength to strength using this platform and anticipate many more fruitful collaborations for the University in partnering with konfer’. 

Ian Gibbs added, ‘For our institution, the support of NCUB's konfer team has been first rate. They are super-responsive, and always on hand to provide expert presentations to staff at the university. Working so closely and effectively with the konfer team has allowed City St Georges to rapidly embed konfer across the university’. 

The Power of konfer, and the role of NCUB 

Finally, as a measure of reach and success of konfer, the following example is worthy of note. 

City St Georges prides itself on the excellence of its academic achievements and has long held leading positions in disciplines including AI and Data Science. Following the successful completion of a multi-million pound Research England Development (RED) project, the Institute for Creativity and AI was established. Led by Professor Neil Maiden, the Institute sought commercial partners to engage in co-designing specific technologies and turned to konfer. In addition to countless connections received, NCUB themselves connected with the Institute and discussions are currently underway to define how NCUB can adopt the technologies developed to inform its analysis and policy output. This is a significant opportunity illustrating both konfer’s capabilities and the underpinning support of NCUB. Simply put, what’s not to like? 

City St George’s, University of London 

June 2025