Commercial Champions

About NUS Enterprise and GRIP Programme

From providing all the knowledge and skill sets necessary to create their own start-ups, providing the industry linkages to real world problems, to providing the mentorship, funding and other support necessary to take the start-up off the ground. GRIP (Graduate Research Innovation Programme) is a comprehensive step-by-step guidance programme to enable alumni, students, researchers, and professors from National University of Singapore (NUS) to transform research into deep-tech start-ups.

NUS Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of NUS, plays a pivotal role in advancing innovation and entrepreneurship at NUS and beyond. It actively promotes entrepreneurship and cultivates global mind-sets and talents through the synergies of experiential entrepreneurial education, active industry partnerships, holistic entrepreneurship support and catalytic entrepreneurship outreach.

Commercial Champions (CC)

Commercial Champions (CC) are individuals with extensive technology commercialisation experience. They are experienced business advisors attached to GRIP projects. Their role is to lead and guide the Project Innovators to:

• Validate the opportunity of their business idea
• Develop a convincing initial business case/plan to secure the first tranche of GRIP investment funding

Roles and responsibilities

A GRIP-CC is a conduit to the industry. They connect the Project teams to key stakeholders who can help to

• Share market insight, challenges and validate the opportunities
• Provide solutions or connect to partners who can help to solve various technology commercialisation needs to materialise a business idea.
• Instil business thinking
• Guide the project team to look for information required by the project through primary and secondary research
• Help the team to distill insights into convincing business model, go to market strategy and eventually a business plan.

Requirements

A GRIP-CC is a part-time role for individuals who are interested in:

• nurturing the younger generation of business leaders;
• looking for new business or investment opportunities.

Typical profile of a GRIP-CC includes:

• Retired or semi-retired c-level executives;
• Angels or serial entrepreneurs;
• Business consultants;
• Partners of venture capital firms;
• Individuals from big corporations;
• and Other experienced individuals.