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The past two decades have seen a dramatic shift in the way universities understand their mission. If the 2010s was the decade of ¡°impact¡±, the 2020s have seen the pursuit of impact focus more closely on innovation: the translation of knowledge into products and services, often through commercialisation and industry partnerships.

Through this activity, universities are increasingly recognised as engines of innovation and growth, key players in delivering regional and national economic goals.

The University of Edinburgh has actively embraced the innovation agenda. Supported by Edinburgh Innovations, our commercialisation arm, we are seeing impressive growth, with a record 127 companies launched last year, as well as 140 patents filed and ?141 million invested into university-associated companies.

But we want to go further.

Two years ago, we convened a group of academic innovators and professionals to explore how we might increase our innovation activity by 2030. Together, we identified a key obstacle to this goal: creating the right career track and recognition for our people. While many of our academics have successfully commercialised their IP or attracted significant industry funding, too often they come up against entrenched ideas about success in academic careers.

This resistance is often subtle, and it can take different forms. In some cases, recruitment panels lack the tools to evaluate innovators, falling back on safer, more traditional academic profiles. Once recruited, researchers can be discouraged from spinning out their IP by concerns that devoting the significant amount of time it takes to form a company will be frowned on by their head of department. Early career researchers may worry that a stint in industry will be seen as a deviation from building an academic career.

While we have for some time recognised and encouraged such activities, we?acknowledge that we have not been sufficiently robust in promoting them across all parts of our ecosystem.

Our newly launched innovation career pathway aims to change that, establishing a clear route to career development for innovation-focused academics.

A key element is a UK-first competency framework that sets out the skills, knowledge and behaviours required to advance innovation careers. The framework comprises 10 competencies, from creativity and strategy to leadership, that span the entire range of innovation capability levels, from ¡°potential innovator¡± to ¡°innovation leader¡±.

The framework can be used in a variety of ways. Innovators can use it to map their skills development and identify training needs. The university can use it to signpost our research management and spot gaps in our support. And panels and hiring managers can use it as a guide for onboarding innovation-oriented academics.

These resources are curated within a new innovation careers hub, which helps innovators plan their pathways, learn about inspirational existing staff innovators, and access 20 development opportunities, including training, leadership programmes and career tools. The pathway dovetails with other career routes, allowing a mix of research, teaching and commercialisation activity.

A key part of the framework is the Innovation Fellowship, a three-year postdoctoral programme launched in 2023. The scheme is for researchers coming out of a PhD who are keen to commercialise their research. Our seven current fellows are provided with time, resources and support to develop their groundbreaking ideas.

Crucially, the framework seeks to address the under-representation of women in innovation. The identified a number of obstacles to female entrepreneurship, including logistical constraints, feelings of exclusion and the absence of clearly defined pathways and networks. We are comprehensively tackling these issues through the framework¡¯s systematic approach to supporting careers.

So what will success look like?

We want to unlock the massive innovation potential of our research community, doubling the number of innovation-active academics and diversifying activity across all career stages.

This expansion will bring massive benefits to society and the economy across our three Research and Innovation missions. In the first of those, Shaping Future Health and Care, we will build on an excellent track record in spin-outs and licensing for drug discovery and advanced therapeutics, including developing drugs for hard-to-cure cancers, new cell therapy for liver disease, and using AI for early detection of disease.

On Tackling the Climate and Environmental Crisis, we will continue building transformative technologies in areas such as energy storage, wind and tidal turbines. There is also huge potential in the applications of engineering biology, exemplified in sustainable biotech startup MiAlgae, which plans to scale up manufacturing at former petrochemical centre Grangemouth.

On Harnessing Data and AI for Public Benefit, we can leverage our status as the UK¡¯s largest cluster of AI expertise and host of the UK¡¯s supercomputer to build on the successes of the Data Driven Innovation programme ¨C part of the Edinburgh and Southeast Scotland City Region Deal. This has already supported 500 businesses to secure more than ?200 million of investments ¨C four times the initial target, and more than half of them based in the region.

Commercial activity is also an increasingly important part of how we resource our research and entrepreneurial ecosystem, such as our in-house venture investment fund, Old College Capital, which funds our staff and student founders¡¯ most exciting innovations.

Through our innovation career pathway, we want innovation to take its rightful place alongside research, teaching and leadership, as a critical part of our mission to drive economic and social benefit across the UK and beyond.

is vice-principal for research and enterprise at the University of Edinburgh.