Sheffield Innovation Spine
Collaborating with our partners to transform our research into innovative businesses, boost economic growth and create highly skilled jobs.
What is the Sheffield Innovation Spine?
The Sheffield Innovation Spine is a thriving, connected community of scaling businesses, co-locating in world-leading facilities in Sheffield city centre.
The Spine is a 20-year strategy to grow Sheffield’s innovation-led economy by linking vital infrastructure, labs and flexible workspaces. The project is a city-wide collaboration between the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, Sheffield City Council, the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University and Sheffield Technology Parks.
Linking both universities, the route of the Innovation Spine arcs through the northern section of Sheffield city centre, curving from the University of Sheffield’s main campus to Tenter Street and West Bar, then down to Riverside and Castlegate before heading south to the Sheffield Digital Campus, Sheffield Hallam University’s City Campus, and the Sheffield Railway station.
The South Yorkshire Investment Zone status enables the partners to bring the vision to life and seek the inward investment, capital development programmes and business support ecosystem required to link the University of Sheffield's spinout pipeline growth with the growth of technology-rich start-ups in the city.
The University’s track record
The University of Sheffield has steadily increased resources for establishing high-value spinout companies over the last five years and has been recognised as one of the best universities in the country for developing IP and commercialising research.
Since 2017, the University has established more than 40 new businesses. These range from medical innovators like Rinri Therapeutics to Opteran, an AI firm that reverse-engineers insect and animal brains.
Together with the expansion of support through the University's Commercialisation Journey, the creation of a £1M annual investment budget and the establishment of Northern Gritstone, there is a dramatic step-change in the number of scalable spinouts launching from the University and raising private Investment.
The University of Sheffield Commercialisation Journey
Contact
Spinouts: commercialisationteam@sheffield.ac.uk
Media: mediateam@sheffield.ac.uk