ENTREPRENEURSHIP &
EDUCATION
Putting
ideas into
practice
The new Greenway Hub at Dublin Institute
of Technology is located at the heart of the
new campus with innovation as its lifeblood.
Prof Brian Norton, President, Dublin Institute of Technology
L
ocating the Greenway
Hub – a new building
focused on research and
innovation and incorporating
incubation space for start-ups–
at the geographic centre of its
Grangegorman campus is a clear
indication of the importance of
entrepreneurship to Dublin Institute
of Technology (DIT).
“Entrepreneurship is front and
centre at DIT,” says the institute’s
president, Prof Brian Norton. “We’re
an institution that is inherently
linked to industry – everything from
manufacturing to the creative sector
– and we are very much focused
on practice-led education leading
people into entrepreneurship.”
Recently completed and set to be
occupied in February, the Greenway
Hub has been funded through
PRTLI and Enterprise Ireland, with
matching funding from DIT. It is
intended to be the lifeblood of
research and innovation on the new
campus. As well as housing the DIT
Hothouse incubation facility and
commercialisation team, it will be
home to 90 PhD students and 40
staff researchers of the Environment,
Sustainability and Health Institute
(ESHI). Students will have access to
a large central lab which is adjacent
to state of the art facilities for areas of
research strength in vision sciences,
assistive technology, food chemistry,
microbiology, solar energy, etc.
“Usually, this kind of building is
on the edge of the campus because
that’s how universities develop,”
says Norton. “Because we have
moved to a new campus we had
the opportunity to put it smack in
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the middle to be emblematic of
the importance of innovation and
entrepreneurship to the institution.”
But the physical location alone
will not achieve that, he says.
“We’re obviously going to have
a lot of activities that begin to
focus the students on the idea that
entrepreneurship and creating your
own business is equally legitimate as
going to work for somebody.
“It’s very much part of the culture
of the organisation: entrepreneurs
being in the middle of the
campus rather than at the edge.
It’s physically, emotionally and in
terms of our educational mission,
intrinsically linked to what we’re
about.”
DIT Hothouse is the innovation
and technology transfer office
responsible for commercialising
intellectual property arising
from research at the institution.
According to Norton, since being
set up in 2007, it has consistently
outperformed other Irish university
technology transfer offices,
completing up to 20pc of the annual
commercial technology transfer
licences in Ireland. And, through
its Enterprise Ireland-funded
incubation programmes, it has
helped create nearly 200 sustainable
businesses that have attracted
€115m in equity investment.
“We have a policy that unless
there’s another agreement in place,
intellectual property belongs to
colleagues and students as of
right,” says Norton. “It’s very much
encouraging the identification
and disclosure and protection of
intellectual property and we have
one of the highest licensing rates in
Ireland as a result. And, 1,400 people
are currently working in our spin
outs.”
The focus on entrepreneurship
varies from programme to
programme, but all are practicebased, research-informed and
developed with input from industry
partners. “They’re all based on
the idea of going into practice,
into the professions, whether as an
employee or an employer or setting
up their own business,” explains
Norton. “They’re very practically
oriented but also very informed
by context and research. You often
get academic and research, but
practice-based and research is quite
an interesting combination.”
To further its ties with industry
and its focus on innovation,
DIT is planning a collaborative,
interdisciplinary, multi-storey
research and science park at
the entrance to the campus at
Broadstone. The complex, which
is expected to be completed and
occupied by 2019.
It’s very much
part of the
culture of the
organisation:
entrepreneurs
being in the
middle of the
campus rather
than at the edge.
will be linked to the creative
industries and will be situated next
Grangegorman campus
to a building devoted to new media,
GEN Magazine Ireland
30/11/2015 8:32 a.m.