Union is a new club for enterprises involved in corporate open innovation and venturing. Union is for networking, alliances and mutual recommendation of innovative small companies. It was set up as a collaborative initiative between NESTA and Oracle and follows on from our successful innovation project together, Open Alchemy, which showcased the power of corporate collaborations.
There are now some 75 Union members from diverse sectors of UK industry and part of the fun of Union meet-ups is comparing notes with similar professionals from different backgrounds in a social setting. One of the barriers to effective open innovation is the inability to meet enough interesting people in the time available – what David Rajan, Director of Emerging Business at Oracle calls the ‘cappuccino problem’. Union is already enabling members to quickly source innovations or deals via the principle of ‘6 degrees of separation’.
Our overarching aim is to increase the efficiency of linking up innovative UK based SMEs with corporate partners – brokering direct and valuable relationships. We call this approach ‘Clients not Cash’ and feel that there is often more value in providing a route to market for small companies than in burdening them with VC debt and other strings. Of course Union may lead to direct collaborations between corporates that are more like alliances or technology transfer and this is also one of our objectives. We are prototyping a ‘National Needs Network’ which members can use to compare their open innovation requirements and share SME contacts.
Union membership is limited to corporate members but SMEs and others are invited to events as appropriate. There is no membership fee at present.
For more information please contact David Simoes-Brown or David Rajan or Roland Harwood.
There are now some 75 Union members from diverse sectors of UK industry and part of the fun of Union meet-ups is comparing notes with similar professionals from different backgrounds in a social setting. One of the barriers to effective open innovation is the inability to meet enough interesting people in the time available – what David Rajan, Director of Emerging Business at Oracle calls the ‘cappuccino problem’. Union is already enabling members to quickly source innovations or deals via the principle of ‘6 degrees of separation’.
Our overarching aim is to increase the efficiency of linking up innovative UK based SMEs with corporate partners – brokering direct and valuable relationships. We call this approach ‘Clients not Cash’ and feel that there is often more value in providing a route to market for small companies than in burdening them with VC debt and other strings. Of course Union may lead to direct collaborations between corporates that are more like alliances or technology transfer and this is also one of our objectives. We are prototyping a ‘National Needs Network’ which members can use to compare their open innovation requirements and share SME contacts.
Union membership is limited to corporate members but SMEs and others are invited to events as appropriate. There is no membership fee at present.
For more information please contact David Simoes-Brown or David Rajan or Roland Harwood.