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Weirdly, being located at the heart of the US capital doesn't always help Georgetown University when it comes to creating spinout companies. State universities often have economic development mandates that they can follow, but in Washington DC Georgetown is in something of a vacuum — with little direction for what to focus on, less set funding and fewer people pushing to advance the technologies coming out of the institution.

Silicon Valley is the home of venture capital and startups — but drive an hour or two outside of the city and you are in a different world. Take Monterey, the site of our own GCVI Summit (March 12 to 14 — listen to the episode to get a 10% discount code on tickets). It is a beautiful city with a world-famous aquarium and a gorgeous golf course, but it is a city of extremes: the median household income is $98,000 while at the same time more than 10% of the population lives in poverty.

Tony Boccanfuso has spent the past 17 years trying to work out how to get universities and corporations to collaborate better on research. Boccanfuso is the chief executive of UIDP, a non-profit association between large companies and leading research universities around the world. The invitation-only organisation has more than 200 members.

Beyond the Breakthrough returns 9 February. Here is a trailer with some of our upcoming guests this season.

We revisit the highlights from the past season and find out the key lessons from every guest, from dealing with failure to delivering entrepreneurial training for PhDs to building a cluster that spans more than a dozen institutions.

Today, we’re bringing you a recording of a recent discussion organised by our friends at TenU, the international collaboration between ten tech transfer offices in Belgium, the US and the UK. The panel, led by KU Leuven’s Paul Van Dun (listen to our interview with him in episode 31), tackled the question: how do you build critical mass to create innovation ecosystems? Offering their expertise were University of Michigan’s Kelly Sexton (hear more from her in episode 13), Ouest Valorisation’s Vincent Lamande, Innovate UK’s Geeta Nathan and Northern Gritstone’s Marion Bernard (and you can learn more about that firm in our interview with her colleague Duncan Johnson).

We're bringing you an episode from Mawsonia's other podcast, CVC Unplugged, featuring an interview with Owen Thompson, CEO of Cambridge Future Tech.

SETsquared has achieved something few have: it’s built an ecosystem that spans six institutions across England and Wales and a programme that provides end-to-end support to founders both within and without the universities. Banding together means the six universities don’t just rival their peers in London, Oxford or Cambridge (portfolio companies have raised some £4bn to date), but in some areas are setting the pace: Bristol, for example, is responsible for a third of all quantum computing companies in the UK.

Prof Susie Speller is a fellow at St Catherine’s College and researcher in the Oxford Centre for Applied Superconductivity at the University of Oxford, where she helps corporates like Siemens Healthineers (which manufactures MRI scanners), fusion energy developer Tokamak Energy and scientific instruments company Oxford Instruments solve challenges around superconductors.

The Australian government wants to get 1,800 more PhD candidates to commercialise their work over the next decade, as part of the A$2.2bn University Research Commercialization Action Plan. But turning PhD students and early-career researchers into entrepreneurs is not a simple task. How do you identify the right people and train them to embrace a more commercial way of thinking?

The NHS, the UK's national health service, is often seen as slow to adopt innovation. But Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, located in London and linked to King's College London — has actually created a highly sophisticated unit to commercialise innovations developed at their hospitals.

Can British university research help families in South America secure a mortgage? That's what the University of Oxford did with its social venture spinout SOPHIA Oxford, which analyses contributing factors to poverty from the state down to the corporate level and helps companies make better choices for their employees.