Forging a Midlands model for academic commercialisation
The University of Birmingham has been training academics to commercialise their research for more than 20 years through the Medici programme, which now has more than 400 alumni.
In 2025 Medici saw a significant expansion, when it was extended to 16 partner universites as part of the Forging Ahead Project, a £16 million, five-year project to scale and strengthen university commercialisation in the Midlands. £10 million was funded by Research England and the other £6 million was from co-investment from the university partners.
Appetite for the Medici programme — a series of in-person training days delivered by expert trainers and entrepreneurs — had already shown growth. The Enterprise team had planned to take a cohort of 20 academics through the course last year but expanded this to 41 because of the number of applicants. Next year, the plan is to expand to accommodate high demand.
The 2025 Medici cohort included academics from across the Midlands including De Montfort University, Loughborough University, Keele University, Birmingham City University, Coventry University, Aston University, University of Warwick, Nottingham Trent University, University of Lincoln University of Nottingham, Cranfield University, University of Wolverhampton, and University of Derby.
Rajinder Bhuhi, Project Manager for Forging Ahead says one of the draws of the programme is that it works for academics at all stages of their entrepreneurship journey.
“Medici caters for a people coming in at varying levels, whether you're somebody who's got huge industry and academic experience or whether you're somebody that's at an earlier stage of experience."
The key to the programme is meeting other academics and learning how they are approaching the commercialisation challenge. “It's really that peer-to-peer discussion and opportunity that's the richness of being part of a cohort provides,” she says.
Not every attendee turns instantly into an entrepreneur, she adds. The main goal is to inspire mindsets and build entrepreneurial confidence, a process that may play out over many years.
Rajinder Bhuhi, Forging Ahead Project Manager
Pernille Hjort, Peer-to-Peer Learning Manager, Forging Ahead
Pernille Hjort, Peer‑to‑Peer Learning Manager on the Medici programme, says one of the biggest shifts Medici creates is going from purely academic framing to customer and market thinking.
Course participants tend to agree. As one academic from Nottingham Trent University who undertook the course put it:
“Throughout my academic life, my focus has always been on research, with little exposure to the commercial side of innovation. This programme helped me understand the importance of translating research into real-world applications. I found it extremely useful in broadening my perspective beyond the laboratory.”
Alongside supporting an entrepreneurial mindset, Forging Ahead also offers practical support through its partner universities. One example is the Commercial Champions Programme, which helps academic founders access experienced CEOs, Chief Marketing Officers and Non-Executive Directors who can bring commercial expertise, strengthen leadership teams and help ventures grow with confidence.
Through the Forging Ahead Project and working together with university partners and the wider ecosystem, they can also connect researchers to external angel networks, corporate legal information, and early-stage investors. Several participants have already started building new partnerships and attract support through these opportunities. Mingming Zhu from Cranfield University, said that following her Medici training in 2025, she was able to engage with industry partners and secure additional funds to push her technology forward.
Forging Ahead is also bringing together a number of previously separate commercialisation programmes across the Midlands. These include the SPARK The Midlands programme, a pre-clinical accelerator programme led by Aston University, IP2SME, a programe which places early career researchers with SMEs on a secondment for six months, part-time, enabling the flow of university IP and a direct route to market, and VentureVersity, a programme run by Loughborough University, offering up to £600,000 in funding and support, designed to help University staff build momentum around research and projects which have potential to become new products and services.
The launch of Forging Links took place in May 2026. Photography: Jason Hier
A new regional network, Forging Links, is designed to fill the gaps in information and connectivity. “Forging Ahead and Medici in particular, is a part of the wider ambition to strengthen commercialisation across the Midlands and share the good practice,” says Pernille Hjort.
Rajinder Bhuhi is clear about what success should look like by the end of the five years. On the metrics side, she wants “more spin-outs, more licensing, more joint ventures, working with industry.” But the deeper ambition is cultural: “an academic base that's actually better prepared for entrepreneurialism and commercialising, open to any opportunity.”
In a region where around 50% of spin‑outs already sit in life sciences and medtech, and where strengths range from clean tech and advanced manufacturing to space technologies and creative industries, the innovative ideas are already there. Forging Ahead through partner universities helps them find the right people, support and momentum to accelerate commercial success and deliver real-world impact.
As Pernille Hjort puts it, commercialisation is "not just about having a good idea, its also about understanding who values it and why."