The Louvain Innovation Network (LIN), established by UCL, assembles six university partners in promoting entrepreneurship and innovation.
All of them aim to support and equip leaders of innovative and entrepreneurial projects in order to create new businesses. While highlighting university and partner resources, LIN provides greater publicity in a high-density space for available offers: training, coaching, funding sources, co-working spaces, offices and services.
Six partners in promoting entrepreneurship and innovation
- UCL, a multidisciplinary, multilingual and multicultural university covering a wide range of study and research fields. The French-speaking world’s fourth-ranked comprehensive university, it hosts 30,000 students and 3,000 researchers at seven sites in Wallonia and Brussels.
- Louvain Technology Transfer Office (LTTO), a one-stop shop for developing research findings and technology transfer, composed of teams from the Research Department and Sopartec S.A., UCL’s technology transfer company.
- Vives – Louvain Technology Fund, a private seed money and venture capital investment fund managed by Sopartec S.A. that invests in innovative advanced technology companies, UCL spin-offs and start-ups.
- UCL incubators: the Louvain-la-Neuve Center for Enterprise and Innovation and the Brussels Life Science Incubator are hosting service providers that help innovative start-ups and SMEs draft a business plan.
- Mind&Market, fruit of the partnership between UCL and the Alliance Centre BW business association, which offers an annual forum, a web platform and networking events for innovators to expose their project to market realities and build a winning team around the project leader.
- UCL science parks
LIN is intended for:
- UCL researchers hoping to develop their research findings;
- future students considering entrepreneurship;
- recent UCL graduates who want to create a start-up and need financial and/or organisational help;
- leaders of UCL or other innovative projects;
- young businesses looking to expand;
- investors looking for university contacts to help create and develop their business, especially via university research.
Training support for your innovation project
CRECIS, UCL’s Center for Research in Entrepreneurial Change and Innovative Strategies, established Louvain Innovation, an awareness-building and training initiative for business managers in how to use innovation management expertise developed by UCL. To generate champions of innovation, Louvain Innovation offers businesses an executive training programme in innovation management that aims to impart tomorrow’s innovators all the necessary knowledge for leading a successful innovation project, with emphasis on managerial, economic and networking dimensions. This very practical programme helps the innovator use his or her ‘business project’ as a hands-on means for training and to validate it by earning a university certificate. Louvain Innovation also offers on-demand half-day workshops for businesses and managers, led by CRECIS innovation experts.