The Innovation and Enterprise Office (IEO) Forum supported by IPI has grown to be a vibrant platform for IEOs to share the latest initiatives targeted at building a stronger local innovation landscape through academia-industry technology collaboration since its inaugural session in March 2017. Held twice a year, the IEO Forum in 2019 will be co-chaired by the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

The fifth IEO Forum kicked off on 3 April 2019 saw a high turnout of 80 representatives from the local IEOs, government agencies as well as invited guests from the PUB, DesignSingapore Council, CoolestSG consortium and Smart Grid and Power Electronics Consortium Singapore (SPECS). The consortiums presented their new initiatives to aggregate and commercialise local IPs in collaboration with IPI, and encouraged the IEOs to leverage these initiatives to accelerate IP commercialisation in the respective technology areas.

Dr Wong Woon Kwong, Director of the Office of Technology and Enterprise Management from SUTD and co-chair of the forum, introduced the university’s IP Clinic entrepreneurship education programme. IP Clinic aims to provide students and researchers with a good understanding on intellectual property and includes a practical workshop on Technology Disclosure (TD) writing for patent filing.

The forum provided a conducive platform for the IEOs to connect with one another and generated much interaction amongst the attendees.

The next IEO Forum will be held in the second half of 2019 and hosted by Ngee Ann Polytechnic.