KT Boost
TU Dublin Innovation is co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Union through the ERDF Southern, Eastern & Midland Regional Programme 2021-27
The Enterprise Ireland KT Boost Programme is a four-year initiative focused on enhancing Innovation Offices at Irish universities and technological universities. This program aims to support the commercialisation of research in Higher Education Institutions across Ireland. The programme is administered by Enterprise Ireland, and co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) which aims to promote economic, social and territorial cohesion across all European regions. The Managing Authorities for the ERDF in Ireland are the Northern & Western Regional Assembly and the Southern Regional Assembly.
Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) was established as Ireland’s first technological university on 1st January 2019, with strong industry engagement a distinguishing characteristic of TU Dublin. Since its foundation in 2007, TU Dublin Innovation (the “Office”) has filed over 600 inventions, executed over 230 licence agreements, created over 40 spin-outs, engaged in over 1,000 industry projects, and won 4 KTI Impact Awards. The Office is widely known to be pragmatic and flexible, adopting best innovation office practices, serving over 800 staff across 5 campus locations.
For KT Boost, TU Dublin are focusing on higher-quality KT outcomes, boosting the number of EI Commercialisation Fund awards, spin-outs achieving HPSU status, and the number of industry collaborations.
Over the term of KT Boost, TU Dublin are targeting a (against TTSI3 performance):
- a) 2.5x increase in EI Commercialisation Funds awards
- b) 3.1x increase in spin-outs achieving HPSUs status
- c) 1.7x increase in industry research collaborations
- while:
- d) maintaining LOAs targets
TU Dublin plan to achieve these stretch targets by:
- focusing on high-quality spin-outs, licenses and large industry collaborations;
- assess spin-out opportunities more systematically, and support recent spin-out ventures;
- increasing research income by increasing TU Dublin’s involvement in national research centres, and grow SME engagement;
- leveraging other internal functions to build staff entrepreneurial mindsets, long-term research and innovation partnerships, and access to incubator facilities and resources;
- targeting marketing and events on ideation, industry collaboration and spin-out formation; and
- improving business intelligence and strategic decision-making, streamlining processes, and reducing administrative burden.