Our bet is Unit M – we’re a small team with a big mandate: to maximise the impact of the University of Manchester’s world-class research and innovation at speed, across disciplines, and in partnership with those who’ve never stepped foot on campus, to change people’s lives for the better.

Through Unit M, we’re tipping all the great things that go on at our university out into the world to make jobs, create opportunities and offer solutions to social and economic problems.

Unit M, led by CEO Professor Lou Cordwell, exists to answer a simple question: if the University is the region’s biggest innovation asset, what exactly should it do to drive innovation-led growth? Our answer is to set up a disruption unit that experiments, makes mistakes and – crucially – involves more people than have previously been included in the process and benefits of innovation.

We believe the great universities of the 21st century will be those who go from discovery to impact in the quickest possible time. So our mission is to get University research and ideas out into the real world, creating more jobs and growth, much faster than UK universities have done in the past.

Unit M is future-facing – but the principle is rooted in Manchester’s deep past. The city has long been a crucible of scientific breakthroughs and social movements – Turing and AI, but also women’s suffrage and the trade unions.

Manchester was the home of England’s first civic university, set up to serve the needs of the City of Manchester, the North West, the UK and the international community. But it was also a global business hub, with all the change that brings. The flying shuttle and the spinning jenny came from having boots on the ground and skin in the game, with innovation emanating from first-hand experience.

Today, Manchester remains a powerhouse of thinking, culture and industry. The region is built on a culture of innovation – weaving together industry and academia, and acting on the sparks of knowledge that the region’s workforce has about how to improve their jobs, innovate and change the world. Yet, there is still much unfulfilled potential, and we believe the process of opening up innovation will allow us to bridge that gap.

Unit M isn’t about driving growth for growth’s sake or developing more apps for tech bros to make billions. It’s about making changes and developing ideas that are economically and socially useful.

The projects that will enable change will come from you, reading this. And they’ll benefit you, reading this, too.

Unit M harnesses the University of Manchester’s world leading 13,000 staff, its 46,000 students, and its half a million alumni scattered across the globe. We make things happen – and each project we’re involved in is focused on shifting the dial so that more people are included in the benefits of innovation.

The economy in our region and around the world is changing faster than ever before. Universities need to adapt to seize new opportunities – we're doing that. Unit M is an open front door, building connections between industry, academia and our wider community.

Unit M has a mandate to operate in a way that is fast and fierce. We can move on industry timescales while still tapping the capabilities built into the institution. Half of Unit M comes from a university background. Half comes from big industry, the startup world, local and national government, investment communities, innovation agencies and more. It’s a multidisciplinary blend of skills, with people who know how to set a strategy, and deliver against it.

Over the next 12 months, we’re building a central innovation hub at the heart of campus on Oxford Road where tens of thousands of students and staff pass daily.

In the spirit of open innovation, our founding ethos, while our base is on a university campus, Unit M’s reach can’t and won’t just end there. To ensure that innovation works for a different group of people in the future, we'll be collaborating across the region to help drive jobs and growth where it's needed most.

That’s why we are spending most of our time facing outwards, asking which problems matter in neighbouring communities as much as in university labs, and deploying specialist teams to create solutions. We’re open to new ideas, open to everyone, and we’re open for business.