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| Penistone Line Author Richard Harvey Licence CC BY-SA 2.0 UK Source Wikimedia |
Yesterday I attended Innovate Local - South Yorkshire at Glide House in Attercliffe. This was the fourth Innovate Local that I had attended. The others were in Bradford, Halifax and Production Park which is somewhere near South Kirkby. The Victoria Hotel and Dean Clough Mill were easy enough to find. Production Park was a pain to find, but Glide House took the biscuit. It does not appear on all maps and the few that show it fail to identify car parks and bus routes in the vicinity.
As there were 110 names on the delegate list, I doubted that I would find parking. I therefore took the Penistone Line, which somehow survived Dr Beeching. Between Honley and Dodworth, that line meanders through some of the loveliest landscapes in England. As the train was not very fast and as my taxi driver had never heard of Glide House and could not find it or Terry Street on his satnav, I arrived after the event had started. One friendly face I met outside the building belonged to Abdul-Basit Mohammed, whom I had met at several other UKRI events. Another belonged to Jordan Meadows, who staffed the registration table and graciously accepted my apology for tardiness.
The morning session opened with talks by Kola Ladejobi (Knowledge Transfer Manager ‑ Local Partnerships Innovate UK Business Connect), Lee Viney (Regional Manager – Yorkshire & Humber and the North East Innovate UK), Abbie Miladinovic (Strategic Lead Investment Zone) and Martin Baker (Ideas & Innovation Director, Gripple Ltd). It continued with presentations from Richard Gardiner of Ferret Works, Andy Taylor, Team Leader (Yorkshire & Humber) Innovate UK Business Growth, Lisa Whalley (Client Relationship Manager, Sheffield Hallam University) and Ryan Sylvester(Lead Sector Specialist – Investment Zone Growth and Sector Development).After a 30-minute coffee break, Paul O'Brien (CEO of Elaros), Zeezy Izenman (Founder and CEO Motion Health Ltd.), Ben White, Co-Founder of Rivelin Rail and Clare Lankester, Commercial Director of Fyous discussed their respective business innovation journeys. Towards the end of the discussion, the moderator invited the inventors and entrepreneurs to reveal their "eureka moment". I observed that in my experience of advising and assisting inventors, most technical advances resulted from a long process of experiments, observations and adjustments. The man in the seat next but one to mine said that innovation was a response to a problem. I subsequently discovered that he had attended one of my initial advice and signposting clinics and that he had put my advice to good use.
The last session of the morning was on future thinking and featured Joseph Quinn of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, Claire Louise Green, Business Investment Manager of Rotherham MBC, Ben Hawley, Group Leader of Enterprising Barnsley at Barnsley MBC and Alex Dochery, Investment Team Manager at Business Doncaster (City of Doncaster MDC). That session covered the funding and support available from the mayoral combined authority and each of the boroughs. I learned a lot from that discussion but was disappointed that nobody acknowledged the work of the South Yorkshire Business and IP Centre in Sheffield Central Library and each of the boroughs or the Business Village on Innovation Way in Barnsley.
Attendees were treated to a buffet lunch of sandwiches, sausage rolls, pizzas and brownies with hot and cold drinks between 12:45 and 14:00. I explored the stands and met some of the exhibitors. I recognized a few faces from the Inventors Club that I used to chair at Sheffield Central Library and the initial advice and signposting clinics that I ran at the Business Village and other locations. As I was entering my taxi, one of them - a lady I know only as Olusola - recognized me and asked whether I still ran the clinics. I was glad to tell her that I did.
After lunch, we had a choice between "Financing your business through Public and Private Funding", "Good Application Guide" and "Unlocking Growth Across Sectors with AI." I chose the last and listened to an entertaining panel discussion between Emma Louise Staines, Founder of ComplyAI, Mark Taylor Founder of Automated Analytics, Professor Wei Xing of Sheffield University and Dr Denis Newman-Grifis. Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court had handed down its judgment in Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2026] UKSC 3 (11 Feb 2026) on whether it is possible to patent "a particular type of what may loosely be called artificial intelligence, specifically that which consists of, resides in, or is centred around, an artificial neural network". I had hoped for an industry comment on the case, but the topic did not come up in discussion, and I did not get a chance to raise it. However, the panel did discuss the menace of human biases in programming AI systems at Mark Taylor's instigation which was also interesting.
The last item on the agenda was another breakout session. We were offered "Discover the Power of Innovation Through Knowledge Transfer Partnerships", "From Innovation to Impact: Commercialising Health Solutions in South Yorkshire" and "Innovate UK Business Growth and Global". I chose the second option, which was another panel discussion. The panellists were Richard Stubbs, Sarah Daniel, Rashmi Raju, Aaton Oliver Taylor and Professor Paul Dimitri. All had interesting things to say but only Sarah Daniel, who had established several rehabilitation clinics throughout Yorkshire, seemed to focus on commercializing health solutions in the county.
Attendees were invited to stay on until 17:00 for networking, and I noticed that there was a bar in Glide House. As there is only one train an hour in each direction along the Penistone Line, I called a taxi and left for Meadowhall station. I had a good day and congratulate the organizers and speakers. My only criticism is that a lot of organizations that help entrepreneurs, such as the Business and IP Centres and the Business Village, were absent. I was surprised that I was the only intellectual property professional and I am not sure that there were any angel or private equity investors at the event.
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