Shu Liu´s Report for LERU Doctoral Summer School 2011

LERU doctoral summer school hosted by UCL in 2011 focused on the enterprise skills for early career researchers. UCL is the most suitable place to hold the summer school for this theme because the famous university was founded by some entrepreneurs. In the summer school, 35 PhD students from 22 different universities in Europe, the USA and China, were given an overview of commercialising technologies, which includes presenting business ideas, writing business proposals, basic knowledge concerning budget, patent and licensing.
The highlight of the summer school is the team work project “Moving towards a Smart City”, where every seven students worked in a team. The participants learned how to work together in a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary team and recorded the “painful” growing process in a 3–minute-movie, which is a very valuable and exciting experience. After the final presentation of our business ideas, the participants also gained valuable feedback on the business plan from four industry experts. The summer school was very well organized with alternating practical and theoretical hours, which helped the participants to have a deeper understanding of the theory learned from the different workshops and to utilize them more easily in the future.
In summary, I have gained the following from the summer school: the skills needed in an entrepreneurial context, most of which have been developed during our PhD research; the insight of how to turn ideas into a viable business proposition; and most importantly, how to efficiently and successfully work in a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary team.