Midlands Mindforge

The Midlands Innovation partnership is ideally positioned to translate cutting-edge research and innovation into real-world commercial applications. We collectively boast world-leading R&D talent and capabilities across several growth sectors, and can draw upon a wealth of experience and resources including science parks, incubators, and strong industry links.

Since its inception in 2015, our partnership of eight research-intensive universities has sought to strengthen its collective spinout and start-up ecosystem, establishing MICRA (Midlands Innovation Commercialisation of Research Accelerator), the largest formal collaboration of Technology Transfer Offices in the UK in 2018.

Building on this strong foundation, Midlands Mindforge was established in 2023. This initiative aims to further accelerate the commercialisation of university spinouts and early-stage IP-rich businesses in the region.

Commercialisation of IP via spinouts requires significant long-term financial funding and other specialist resources. Lack of access to finance in the region’s research and innovation ecosystem might be hindering the ability of companies emerging from our universities to access capital in sufficient quantities.

Nationally, total investments made in university spinouts have risen significantly in the last decade, with greater levels of funding going to the Golden Triangle (London, Oxford and Cambridge). The average spinout in the Golden Triangle raises 4.6 times as much capital as one in the Midlands in the first seven years, and will have a 3.5 times bigger exit value.

To tackle this Midlands Innovation universities established an independent investment vehicle, Midlands Mindforge Limited (MML) which plans to raise up to £250 million from strategic corporate partners, institutional investors and qualifying individuals. It aims to ‘invest with impact’ to found and scale transformational science backed companies in sectors such as Clean Technologies, AI & Computational Science, Life Sciences & Health Tech, to create highly skilled jobs and support the UK’s ambition to become a science and technology superpower.