Last year, the Government’s Innovation Strategy highlighted the NCUB's role in helping shape the environment for university-business collaboration in the UK, including the role of konfer. Our proven capabilities in smart-matching innovative businesses and universities continue to support new connections to address real world challenges. With continued support from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Research England, konfer continues to evolve.
To help you quickly and easily connect with innovation partners, konfer has a jumbo selection of new features and improvements. New features include an enhanced global search, registered patents, even more research projects, and filters to help you identify university spin-out companies and scale ups. Simplified account dashboards and new menus aim to smooth navigation and help you quickly find and connect with potential partners.
To get you up to speed, here's the top ten new features:
1. Tech-powered with added data konfer helps accelerate the commercial adoption of research by connecting research and innovation partners using AI-powered smart-matching technology. The latest release includes more than 150 UK universities, nearly 73,000 innovation ready businesses, over 38,000 patents, and almost 1.5m pieces of research including Research Council funded projects, KTPs and REF impact case studies. 2. New design business directory Konfer’s business directory includes ‘innovation-ready’ UK companies that are engaged in research, development and innovation, and likely to benefit from grant funding, or collaboration opportunities. This redesign enhances data on nearly 73,000 businesses with added filters for university spin-outs or scale up companies. Research council funded project details are still included, as well as new features highlighting associated projects and patents. 3. Patents Details of over 38,000 patents are now in konfer. In addition to being attached to the relevant business, patent details can also be searched using titles and abstracts – a useful addition to smart-matching technology to help identify collaboration partners. 4. Spin-outs and scale-ups Spin Out and Scale Up tags are now in the business directory, to aid search and discovery. We identify nearly 1500 businesses as University Spin-outs, and highlight the related University as well as over 1800 scale-up companies. 5. Even more research We think KTP project details are a useful new addition to existing research data of funded projects, case studies and publications.
6. Project Participants and Filters Project details now highlight participating universities as well as businesses. Filter searches for more focused results, including participating university and business names, funded value, period, project type and status.
7. New menus Building on the ‘explore’ menu, new expanded navigation menus and global search reflect the increased data that konfer collates and enriches.
8. Global Search An improved global search now includes, businesses, research centres and patents.
9. Assisting knowledge exchange A University Development Group helped the team further develop University Institution Administration accounts, to help track and report on connections and collaborations across universities. 10. Coming soon. Not quite a new feature, but we are already working on next steps. A konfer widget will allow featured organisations to showcase their collaborations and funding calls onto their own websites and intranets, directly from konfer. And we’ll be getting a grip on Research Excellence Framework 2021 case studies.