Tuesday 16 July 2019

Silicon Valley Bank Sponsors 2019 Cambridge Innovation Summit



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

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