Silicon Valley Bank is delighted to have sponsored the third
annual Cambridge Innovation Summit which took place on 9th July.
The Cambridge Innovation Summit brought
together over 90 leading thinkers about innovation processes from businesses
and other organisations across Europe and the USA. Delegates from all of the
consortia run by the Cambridge-based Centre for Business Innovation (CfBI) and
invited guests worked together on challenges and opportunities which they are
experiencing in the innovation landscape.
The summit included a ‘Curated Startup
Matching’ pre-event to Introduce inbound corporates to Cambridge startups
and scaleups organized with the St
Johns’ Innovation Centre. There were sessions on ‘Global Innovation Processes’
(Chaired by Philip Guilford of the University of Cambridge Department of
Engineering with discussion leaders from Amazon, Brightstar, DSTL and Jaguar
Landrover), ‘Innovation with data’ (Chaired by James Boyles of Taylor Vinters with
discussion leaders from Amadeus
Partners, Miotify, and HP Labs) and ‘Innovation Made in Cambridge’ (Chaired by
Haroon Ahmed retired master of Corpus Christi College with cameo presentations
from Astra Zeneca, ARM and Amazon), as well as table-top demonstrations from a number of
Cambridge-based innovators introduced by Alex McCracken of Silicon Valley Bank.
The world-class networking opportunity
culminated with dinner in Trinity Hall addressed by Peter Cowley of Cambridge
Angels on the theme of ‘Why Cambridge
for Innovation?’
On adjacent days CfBI consortia for
‘Open Innovation Meets Big Data’, ‘Medical Adherence/Digital Health’,
‘Nano-Carbon Enhanced Materials’ and ‘Corporate Venturing Leadership’ met in
private sessions in the Cambridge region.
Alex McCracken from Silicon Valley Bank commented “it is pleasing to see large Corporates
collectively discussing their innovation processes and engaging with technology
startups in Cambridge. Corporates are increasingly partnering with startups,
which helps to stimulate the UK ecosystem. From our research in 2018 Corporates
participated in 42% of equity rounds of £10m-£200m roundsize in UK tech businesses” (data from
Pitchbook).
Peter Hewkin CEO of the Centre for
Business Innovation says “We are
delighted to bring together the members of CfBI’s eight international consortia
in Cambridge (UK) each year to inspire, inform and engage them in one of the
world’s best innovation clusters”.
Planning has already started for the next Cambridge
Innovation Summit which will take place on 1st July 2020