Business Development Manager

Description:

Proactively identify opportunities to develop and grow the commercially-facing activities of the Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine (SMQB) including collaborative research and knowledge exchange activity with the Precision Health Technologies Accelerator (PHTA) and external industry partners.

The Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine (SMQB) at the University of Birmingham is seeking an experienced Business Development Manager who will serve as the SMQB’s expert professional for building collaborations with industry partners. This comes at an exciting time for the SMQB with an anticipated move in early 2024 into the Precision Health Technologies Accelerator (PHTA, https://phta.co.uk/), a business innovation facility which is part of the Birmingham Health Innovation Campus (https://phta.co.uk/bhic/). The PHTA provides state-of-the-art incubation and collaboration space and SMQB will be co-located with innovative health and life science businesses, bringing together entrepreneurs, start-ups and scale-ups together with the next generation of academic and clinical leaders, creating unique opportunities to commercialise ideas and accelerate the rapid development of cutting-edge therapies and technologies.

The Business Development Manager will be responsible for driving external partnerships both between other tenants of the PHTA, and external industry partners across the West Midlands, nationally and internationally, creating the deep relationships needed to win work and influence to deliver enterprise objectives. You will lead on income generation against SMQB’s KPIs, growing industry collaborations, consultancy opportunities, CPD and analytical services within the Centre.

Led by Professor John Terry, SMQB’s mission is to transform lives through quantitative biomedical and clinical research. We co-create interdisciplinary research challenges with a range of stakeholders, including industry partners, biomedical researchers, clinical scientists, as well as people with lived experience of disease and members of the public. You will work closely with SMQB leadership and our academics across this unique environment to develop concepts, respond to funding opportunities and to developing high value research partnerships in areas spanning digital health, mathematical and computational modelling, data science and healthcare technologies.

This highly varied role will sit both within the SMQB in the PHTA and within the Business Engagement and Research Impact (BERI) team within the Research Strategy and Services Division (RSSD). BERI is the professional services team which provides an innovative and vibrant hub from which the University engages partners from policy organisations through to industry, to facilitate industry/academic collaboration, deliver impact, income and influence and to broker international and interdisciplinary partnerships.

The Business Development Manager will be responsible for managing, maintaining and identifying new opportunities to enhance our commercial opportunities within and beyond the PHTA regionally, nationally, and internationally.

The successful candidate will:

• Be a highly entrepreneurial individual, with the ability to develop effective relationships with academics, healthcare professionals and industry partners.
• Have experience of business development gained in, or working with, the higher education and commercial sectors such as entrepreneurs, start-ups, scale-ups and MedTech.
• Demonstrate business acumen and be able to use sound commercial judgement in negotiations on behalf of the SMQB, the University with funders and partners.
• Have a successful track record of securing income, increasing revenue from existing clients and establishing new partnerships.

Main Duties

Lead business development and engagement activities within the SMQB:

• Establish and grow commercial partnerships and opportunities both between other tenants of the PHTA, and external industry partners across the West Midlands, nationally and international in areas spanning digital health, mathematical and computational modelling, data science and healthcare technologies.
• To provide business development expertise to the SMQB and its partners to develop concepts and respond to funding opportunities to develop high value research partnerships.
• To develop an active interest in SMQB services amongst SMEs and other potential users on a fee earning basis. To include consultancy opportunities, CPD and analytical services within the Centre.
• To lead on commercially facing income generation against SMQB’s KPIs.
• To develop interest and understanding in the SMQB’s R&D capabilities, brokering relationships between SMEs and SMQB academic & research staff to enable the effective delivery of R&D collaborations.
• To lead on the maturation of business opportunities, development and negotiation to the point where collaborative knowledge transfer projects and R&D collaborations may be launched.
• To provide advice on the applicability of SMQB R&D capabilities to address relevant future market and client specific issues involving the identification of sources of funding where appropriate.
• To champion specific offerings from the University and the SMQB, taking responsibility for their development and continuous improvement with respect to meeting market and SME user needs, ensuring business demand data is regularly and consistently available.
• In collaboration with the University Business Engagement Partners to develop, manage and maintain client relationships with relevant SMEs ensuring that appropriate technical solutions are identified with the potential to meet the clients’ needs.
• To lead on the support of SMQB/SME collaborative projects, providing on-going support to partnerships.
• To lead on the delivery of events / workshops to enhance business engagement and development.
• To attend and report at both internal and external events/meetings, where appropriate.

Institutional relationships:

• As a member of the newly established Research Strategy & Services Division, to work productively with colleagues from across Professional Services to remove barriers to business engagement, ensuring that the University can deliver to the timelines required by business;
• Support practitioner colleagues across the Research Strategy & Services Division to ensure that business-university projects progress effectively through internal systems and processes, making recommendations for internal business improvement where required and making an active contribution to subsequent change processes;
• Work in partnership with contracts and finance practitioners to ensure that there is a strong and effective link between the development of a business-university relationship and the operationalisation of this via approved contracts and established projects;
• Advocate for research and business engagement across the institution, across the Professional Services and the SMQB.