The funding has come from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)’s Strategic Development Fund, which aims to increase universities’ interaction with business and the community.
The pilot will run for 18 months in the East Midlands where DMU will work with local small businesses to help take their latent intellectual property to market.
The university hopes the pilot will form a blueprint for the exploitation of innovative ideas across the country.
Rob Lucas, corporate venturing manager at DMU, said: “The invention process is long and complex and until now the support for innovation has been fragmented.
“The project will pilot a complete managed process that finds, evaluates and commercialises IP across most industry sectors for the benefits of businesses.
"DMU has a strong record of exploiting ideas and IP, particularly working with small and medium-sized enterprises.”
The project will be based at DMU’s Innovation Centre in Leicester.
© Crimson Business Ltd. 2006
