Creating Science with Impact

Since we opened the doors of our first incubator space in St Philips, Bristol in 2017, our members have been responsible for a portion of deep tech capital raised at seed level in the South West of England. Our members contribute to tackling global challenges by, for example, developing next-generation battery technologies, targeted therapeutics, and alternatives to broad spectrum antibiotics. Together, we support around 145 scientific sector jobs in the West of England.

In the last three years our first incubator has supported 57 different member companies, 89% of which are still active.

The past year I’ve been delighted to see some of our members take the next step of their business journey and move into premises of their own. In August 2019, Inductosense expanded into their own R&D and manufacturing space a mile down the road after nearly two years of calling our incubators space their home. After a 16 month residency, the GM Scientific Team secured a unit just outside Bristol where they’ve created their own lab to scale up production.

It’s great for us to see our member companies grow and it showed us we needed to develop more space to house growing companies.

Recently our network has expanded further with more commercial partners joining our community to support our members. We’re very thankful to GreenJay for providing regular one-on-one HR sessions and group-focused team management sessions. GrantTree have delivered quarterly seminars providing expert advice on how to write successful Innovate UK grant proposals. They join our long-term commercial partners VWV (legal), HGF (IP), Corrigan (Finance) and Hayes Parsons (Insurance) who collectively provide the services our growing companies need.

The global health Covid-19 pandemic has shaken every industry and forced companies to reassess the way they work. The collective response to this from our members has meant that our incubator has remained operational throughout, obviously with a number of changes put in place to ensure the safety of all that work here. The adoption of new ways of working and the push for new technologies, specifically at this point vaccines and treatments for SARS-CoV-2, re-emphasises the critical importance of appropriately funding scientific R&D.

We’re proud to provide the facilities and sector specific services that our members need hand in hand with potential investment opportunities as Science Creates. When these three elements combine with our members’ big ideas, we create a culture and environment that ensures the big challenges the world faces can be addressed head on.

About the author:

Dr Ashley Brewer, Centre Director, Science Creates Incubators

Ashley works with early stage, start-up and University spin-out companies to help them realise their business ambitions. He also oversees Science Creates facilities and health and safety.