Head of Incubation

Founded in 1837, the Royal College of Art is the world’s largest community of postgraduate art and design students. It is also the oldest art and design university in continuous operation and has been ranked as the world's number one art and design university for a remarkable ten consecutive years, according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024 – the worldwide survey of academic and industry opinion.

InnovationRCA is the RCA’s start-up/spinout incubation and intellectual property commercialisation centre. To date, InnovationRCA has helped create over 80 companies and these commercially successful companies have gone on to raise over £134million in investor funds, create more than 800 UK-based jobs, and over £200million in sales and exports.  Recognised as ‘world class delivering impressive results’ (McKinsey & Company review, March 2017), InnovationRCA has a sector agnostic approach backing early–stage design-led start-ups in a nurturing ecosystem (for example med-tech, climate-tech, agritech, tech and creative brands ).

The main purpose of the role is to manage and develop InnovationRCA’s award winning High Growth Start-up Incubator programme and its Creative Brands Accelerator.  This includes responsibility for helping the RCA portfolio of spinouts and start-ups (currently over 80 companies) to grow and scale. The role also includes overseeing the delivery of student facing entrepreneurial programmes and leading on the delivery of custom accelerators and entrepreneurship development programmes for overseas clients.  The successful candidate will be a team player with significant experience of early-stage businesses and the UK start-up and investment ecosystem.

Please see Information Pack for further information.

Interviews week commencing 6th May.

The Royal College of Art (RCA)  aims to foster an inclusive culture which promotes equality, values diversity and maintains a working, learning and social environment in which the rights and dignity of all its staff and students and stakeholders are respected. 

We recognise the broad range of experiences that a diverse staff and student body brings and how this  strengthens our research and enhances our teaching. In order for RCA to remain a world-leading institution we are committed to promoting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) principles throughout all of our processes, from application through to appointment.

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