The Innovation Forum aims to build bridges between academia, industry and policy makers.

We all know that this is an important aim, but to be able to materialise this is what made the Innovation Forum Manchester a recent success.

During 2017, the Innovation Forum has worked hard to establish strategic alliances with local organisations and universities. As such, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and Alderley Park Ventures (part of the Biocity group) recently joined efforts with the Innovation Forum Manchester in order to develop the IMAGINE IF! accelerator program.

Despite Manchester and the North-West being home to 12 world-class universities, its entrepreneurship levels fall behind those of the golden triangle. As such, both MMU (with a clear and neat 2020 vision/strategy) and Biocity, agree that more must be done in order to commercialise the research carried out in the laboratories of the region.

How will the partnership develop?

The Innovation Forum Manchester team will work to build a successful IMAGINE IF!18 program. In order to achieve this, a series of introductory workshops to help applicants develop their ideas will be carried out in MMU, in conjunction with several networking opportunities aiming to increase the impact of the application to the IMAGINE IF! program from the North-West: