Imperial College Business School Announces IOP Collaboration Agreement

An announcement at a recent Global Investment Conference (London) hosted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, will make Imperial College London’s expertise in innovation management, technology transfer and engineering available to the Microsofthosted Innovation Outreach Programme (IOP), a cross-industry community of multinational companies. The Innovation Outreach Programme aims to develop innovative business ideas and test how these ideas might profitably be turned into new products and services.

Established in 2009, the IOP enables an elite group of companies, and their chief innovation executives, to regularly discuss the opportunities and challenges they face in developing new products and services or improving existing ones, in order to maintain their competitive edge. Microsoft, which hosts the programme, is now expanding the IOP into Europe, adding a further ten companies. It has chosen Imperial College Business School to provide academic support for both American and European IOP events and activities.

The School will provide the business-focused research, and will also work with other departments within Imperial to draw together engineering expertise for technical proof of concept and new technology development. Members of the IOP will also be able to work with Imperial Innovations, one of the UK’s leading technology commercialisation and investment companies, which is partly owned by the College, to test and launch
successful ventures.

"Imperial is a perfect fit for the IOP and its global members. It offers the latest research and practice on business model and process innovation, alongside an impressive track record of spinning out successful companies," said Michael Steep, Chief of Operations, Microsoft Technical Strategy & Innovation. "The university combines world-class expertise in science, engineering and medicine with a top business school for
innovation. Imperial has a truly entrepreneurial culture which fits well with the IOP so we’re really pleased to announce this partnership to the IOP members."

"We will bring together experts from a range of industries and share what is learnt through applied, market-facing research for the members," said Professor David Gann, Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship research group at Imperial College Business School. "We are very pleased to be a central part of this strong network. It’s an exceptional group of companies. They lead by continual - sometimes radical - product
or service improvement. The IOP is a new model we hope will let corporations open their R&D departments to create new, exciting and successful ventures with other IOP partners."