If you’ve got the idea, get some help to make money

“An entrepreneurial pioneer’s tale offers academics tips on starting a company.

The Government is taking more interest in university spin-offs than ever – so much so that it is considering a proposal to create a ?1 billion fund to assist them. But how does an academic interested in creating a private company to profit from their research go about it, and what are the pitfalls?

Graham Richards, former head of the department of chemistry at the University of Oxford and a board member of the IP Group, which commercialises university intellectual property, tackles these questions in a new book, Spin-outs: Creating Businesses from University Intellectual Property.

In charting the trials and tribulations of Oxford Molecular Limited, a spin-off that Professor Richards set up on the back of his own academic work to provide software to researchers in the pharmaceutical industry, the book offers guidance and advice to would-be academic entrepreneurs.”