Commercial Skills Training for Scientists and Technologists

KKI delivers two types of training particularly well. The first is Commercial Skills Training for scientists and technologists.

There are now a number of organisations offering training aimed at knowledge transfer professionals in development agencies and university commercialisation offices. In contrast, KKI will train, inspire and motivate scientists to become interested in starting spin-out companies. Our advice on 'process' areas like intellectual property can be quite brief - 'hire an IP Lawyer'. Our advice on 'commercial' issues (When do you need a quantitative market research project? How do you hire and pay an overseas distributor?) is much more detailed.

Because KKI has been doing this for over 15 years, we can show examples of people having been directly inspired towards entrepreneurship. For a cohort of (typically Ph.D and young post-doc) staff who receive KKI commercialisation training, we have a reasonable estimate of the outcomes:

the portion who will consider starting some form of commercialisation activity within a few years
the portion who within 4-5 years will have started companies and obtained significant grant and investment funding
the portion who will have achieved 'commercial success' - a thriving company or perhaps an investor exit (which can take 10 years from that first training programme)

Part of the reason that KKI training has a high impact is a distinctive training style. As a generalisation, KKI trains people who:

know little about commerce
are very bright and numerate
are argumentative
find the language of finance and marketing to be mysterious and opaque.

So when training in a workshop we try to:

start at the basics
go very fast
use interaction and case studies, incentives and prizes
demystify and explain jargon

Many attendees like the fact that the workshops are hard, demanding (on both the attendees and trainer), cover a lot of ground, and are rooted in practicality rather than 'business school theory'. However the fact that KKI gets outstanding post-course feedback (which we generally do) is probably the least important outcome. The important outcomes are shown by the careers of some of the entrepreneurs quoted on various pages on this web-site.

Financial Literacy Training

The second area where KKI training really excels is providing basic financial literacy/awareness training for non-accountants (e.g. facilities managers, charity administrators, scientists and engineers, or legal and financial professionals). If you want to understand and use:

basic accounts
budgets
financial jargon

this is the place for you. Open courses, with full CPD accreditation are available through KKI's partnership with BIFM Training (see links page). In-house training can be supplied directly by KKI. This training is notable in that non-financial employees (often facilities managers on BIFM programmes) from some very well known names (see client list!) come to learn basic finance from Kevin rather than asking their own 'high-powered' employers...

Sample Videos

Below you can see Kevin discussing two of the key areas of his approach to commercialisation training. On the left he asks 'What makes an invention of commercial interest?' On the right he discusses the distinction between the 'features' of a technology and the 'benefits' the invention brings to its users.