Support for HEIs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to participate in the SUCCESS Programme

Social sciences research helps tackle some of the biggest societal challenges faced across the world, bridging disciplines through the advanced understanding of the world and the translation of information into knowledge. There is a growing appetite and project pipeline to help mobilise social sciences innovation across the HEI community within the UK through entrepreneurial activity.

Aspect (A social sciences platform for commercialisation, entrepreneurship and transformation) is a CCF (Connecting Capability Fund) programme funded by Research England. The Aspect university partners (LSE, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Oxford, Sheffield, Sussex) and associate members (Bristol, Nottingham Trent, Royal College of Arts, York) are committed to a vision of transforming the impact of social sciences research on the world through commercialisation and innovation.

SUCCESS (Seeding University Collaboration for Commercialisation and Enterprise in Social Sciences) is Aspect's flagship programme, a first-of-its-kind accelerator designed to help social scientists with innovative and marketable research ideas. The programme provides participants with the training, support and funding to transform those ideas into a business or social enterprise. Participants benefit from support to build their ideas, including a boot-camp focussed on developing entrepreneurial skills, expert speakers, and mentorship, as well as the opportunity to pitch for prize funding and VC investment.

ESRC funding will open up these opportunities beyond England and into the rest of the UK and beyond. With ESRC's support, and drawing from the early engagements of Cardiff and Glasgow, SUCCESS will be rolled out across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, expanding the transformation of social sciences research commercialisation into all regions, and supporting key national strategic R&D ambitions, raising our research ambitions, inspiring and enabling talented people and teams, driving up innovation and productivity, levelling up R&D across the UK, being at the forefront of global collaboration and developing world-leading infrastructure and institutions.

Through the involvement of Cardiff and Glasgow in the first SUCCESS programme, all participants and their home institutions have benefitted:
- All teams have gained access to the English, Scottish and Welsh systems of government and how they promote innovation,
- Widening the breadth of the truly unique opportunities fielded by participating institutions,
- Increasing resources and contacts shared across the teams, and
- Increasing strategic engagement with partners in the surrounding innovation ecosystems of Scotland, Wales and England (governmental and non-governmental).

The pilot programme enabled institutions to scale their activities through shared experiential learning, increasing the diversity of types of social sciences research opportunities, and beginning to build a strong supporting ecosystem between institutions and their surrounding innovation systems.

With the support of ESRC, the participation of HEIs in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, will:
- Enrich the SUCCESS project pipeline,
- Extend access to resources including investment, mentoring, experience, and build networks and ecosystems of business and investors,
- Help to develop new pathways to impact for the social sciences,
- Create a vibrant community going forward that successive iterations of the accelerator can draw upon,
- Promote more inclusivity within and across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and greater engagement for all teams with ecosystems, be they strategic partners, funders or differing strategic government priorities, and
- Create ambassadors for social sciences commercialisation and entrepreneurship.