Establishing Support for Academic Entrepreneurship in Universities
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Initiative
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Establishment of University Enterprise Boards
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- A high-level Enterprise Board has been set up in each university to drive innovation.
- The Enterprise Boards were formed from a subset of the university’s Board of Trustees and include other members with relevant experience.
- The Enterprise Board manages the university’s Innovation Fund.
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Innovation Funds for Universities
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- An Innovation Fund was established in each university to supplement the universities’ internal funding for innovation and entrepreneurship activities.
- The Innovation Fund funds entrepreneurship education, technology incubators, entrepreneurs-in-residence and other programmes, to promote commercialisation of university technologies.
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Creating Enterprise Support Structures
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Initiative
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Proof-of-Concept Grants
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- A proof-of-concept is generally needed to show that a technology works and has potential for commercialisation.
- The grant provides funding for researchers based in IHLs to develop such proofs-of-concept for their technology ideas.
- Each grant will be up to a maximum of S$250,000.
- A similar scheme, administered by SPRING Singapore provides funding for companies
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Technology Incubation Scheme
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- Technology incubators provide the environment for the systematic nurturing of young companies before they are ready for venture capital funding.
- The scheme provides 85% co-funding, up to S$500,000, for companies accepted into approved technology incubators, in exchange for equity stake in the company.
- Co-investors have the option to buy out NRF’s share of the company at the next round of financing.
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Early-Stage Venture Funding
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- There is a dearth of VCs to fund early-stage companies.
- The scheme will seed the development of a number of early-stage VC funds to plug this gap.
- NRF will match 1:1 the funds raised by VCs.
- Funds will be managed by professional VCs, and will invest only in Singapore-based high-tech start-ups.
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Disruptive Innovation (DI) Incubator
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- An incubator, based on the disruptive innovation[1] (DI) methodology of Prof Clayton Christensen, has been set up to identify companies that have the potential to disrupt a current industry and create new ones.
- NRF is supporting the incubator with 85% co-funding.
- The investment committee will evaluate the start-ups based on disruptive innovation criteria. The start-ups will be nurtured using the DI methodology.
- A significant proportion of start-ups will be sourced from IHLs.
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| Global Entrepreneurial Executives |
- This is a scheme to attract high-growth, high-tech venture-backed companies with Global Entrepreneurial Executives [entrepreneurs with significant operating experience and track records (in a leadership capacity) in the growth of successful startup companies ] in ICT, medtech and cleantech to relocate to and anchor core business activities in Singapore.
NRF will invest up to US$3m in matching funding to eligible companies in the form of convertible notes through 2 Singaporean VCs.
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Enhancing Technology Transfer
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Initiative
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Translational R&D Grants for Polytechnics
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- Polytechnics play an important role in technology transfer to bring university research closer to market.
- The grant will support polytechnics to perform translational research on the R&D output from universities and research institutes (RIs).
- It will encourage universities and RIs to work with polytechnics as strategic partners to bring research breakthroughs to the marketplace.
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National IP Principles for Publicly-funded R&D
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- A set of principles, guidelines and best practices has been developed for the identification, ownership, protection and exploitation of intellectual property arising from publicly-funded research.
- These principles serve to promote the use of IP from publicly-funded research; encourage participation of local businesses and promote industry-IHL collaboration.
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Innovation Vouchers Scheme
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- Innovation Vouchers will be given to SMEs to procure R&D and other services from IHLs and public research institutions.
- The scheme will encourage SMEs upgrade their operations through R&D projects with IHLs and public research institutes.
- The scheme is administered by SPRING Singapore
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Supporting Innovation Policy Studies
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Initiative
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Innovation and Enterprise Institute
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- The proposed Institute is expected to contribute significantly to the development of the innovation and enterprise (I&E) ecosystem in Singapore.
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