The UK Agri-Tech Centre hosted its inaugural flagship event, Initiate, in Birmingham on June 17, bringing together a diverse range of start-ups, SMEs, corporates and industry professionals from across different sectors within the innovation ecosystem. Initiate acts as a launchpad to spark new ideas, fresh collaborations and meaningful conversations that could shape the future of agri-tech.
The key objectives of the day were to put emphasis on being a cohesive and collaborative ecosystem, showcasing how, by coming together from our different areas of expertise, we can make a direct impact on the sector.
Initiate is designed to create a network that ensures innovators across the ecosystem can get the right support at the right time, helping them transform and elevate their ideas into scalable solutions that address real-world challenges across the agri-food sector.
Morning panel sessions: Ideation to commercialisation
The morning featured ‘In Conversation with’ panels – Seed, Germinate and Fertilise – sponsored by Innovate UK ICURe, Satellite Applications Catapult and Barclays. These sessions offered attendees the opportunity to hear directly from entrepreneurs and experts who have successfully navigated the journey from start-up to scale-up and entering the world of commercialisation.
Key takeaways:
- Prepare to be agile in a constantly evolving landscape
- Getting the right support at the right time is crucial
- Collaboration is important but it is critical to choose the right strategic partners
- Ideas are only as strong as their execution
- Regulations, misalignment of funding cycles and working in isolation can be a challenge, so identifying timelines and resource requirements early makes a difference
Afternoon workshops: Opening the gate to open innovation
Discussions continued into the afternoon, transitioning into workshops that focused on open innovation. These sessions encouraged collaborative discussions between academics, innovators and industry leaders to frame real challenges, propose solutions and explore how emerging technologies can be leveraged to drive progress.
Panel 1: Entrepreneurial mindset – The key to making connections and driving mutually beneficial collaboration
This session highlighted the need for focus. The advice given was to break down your technology offering into value-chain or operational silos, understand your data needs and deliver a compelling value proposition to your end-user.
Panel 2: Gaining competitive advantage – Ensuring you have the right model to scale your business
This session highlighted the vast array of research and connectivity that a scaling business needs to undertake before pressing forward to commercialisation. It emphasised the importance of research, validation and finding the right strategic partners.
Panel 3: Strengthening the ecosystem: Supporting agri-tech Innovation from the ground up
This workshop reinforced a clear takeaway – we are not short of great ideas, but it is essential to have the right infrastructure, including people, platforms and partnerships, to build an agri-tech system that is smarter, faster and well-connected.
Wendy Hewitson, UK Agri-Tech Centre’s External Engagement Manager, summed up the day saying: “Initiate truly lives up to its name. We’ve sparked a powerful network of networks and the next step for us is to ensure that we keep the momentum going. Watch this space for future updates!”
Looking ahead
Initiate showcased how fertile the agriculture sector is. It highlighted the potential for cross-sector innovation, where ideas from other industries can be adapted, refined and applied within the sector. It aims to encourage fresh thinking, new value streams and enable companies to become more agile and adapt to fit future regulatory shifts, climatic changes and external pressures.
The UK Agri-Tech Centre is a key player in supporting the future of the agriculture sector. Events like Initiate play a crucial role in building a resilient and collaborative ecosystem that supports the scale-up of innovative companies and technologies and we’re looking forward to hosting the next iteration.
