North-West Uni, Standard Bank partner to grow inventors

The showcase will introduce selected guests and clients of Standard Bank to a suite of new projects and its spinout companies based on the intellectual property of the university.

It will also offer a commercialisation platform to a number of joint projects from outside the academic world, as the NWU strives to promote innovation in wider constituencies.

According to Professor Deon de Beer, chief director of technology transfer and innovation support at the NWU, one of the greatest challenges for innovators and inventors is to find appropriate commercialisation partners with the financial muscle to take their inventions to market.

"Universities will not survive without such partners"

“Universities will not survive in the innovation and commercialisation space without such partners from industry. Standard Bank has offered to play a crucial role in facilitating such introductions, and this will hopefully be the first of many such showcases. Hats off to Standard Bank, they have an incredible vision in this regard,” De Beer says.

This showcase event is the first of a number of innovation projects that will strive to promote ideas for commercial value. Today, 24 March 2017, scores of startups will be guided towards maturity by an expert incubation team at the Standard Bank Incubator in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

“Our partnership with the NWU allows us to contribute towards the development of grassroot entrepreneurs by offering them access to market, mentoring, coaching services and training in business development through our incubator system," says Jayshree Naidoo, head of the Standard Bank Incubator.