Magnetic Venture
The Story of Oxford Instruments
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 25 January 2001
- ISBN 9780199241088
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages438 pages
- Size 242x163x28 mm
- Weight 890 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 16pp colour plates, numerous halftones 0
Categories
Short description:
Oxford Instruments is one of the UK's success stories - a science-based company which from the earliest beginnings in a garden shed has become a successful quoted company and a world leader in applied superconductivity. Its success is due in major part to the entrepreneurial skill of Sir Martin Wood, and the company has become a model for the new science-based university spin-offs. Audrey Wood has written a first-hand account of its evolution which provides real evidence of the challenges of entrepreneurship, innovation, technology transfer, and raising finance.
MoreLong description:
Magnetic Venture is the inside story of Oxford Instruments, the first substantial spin-off company from Oxford University, established in 1959. Written by one of its founders, it describes the ups and downs, the mistakes and successes of a growing science-based company. Over four decades Oxford Instruments grew from its small beginnings in a garden shed to an international company pioneering developments in superconductivity and medical instruments. It has been rightly celebrated as one of Britain's business successes, and became the role model for many later spin-offs.
Although the environment for new technology companies has changed much since the early 1960s, many of the problems and challenges for growing science-based firms remain the same. Audrey Wood both tells an exciting story of endeavour and risk-taking, and touches on many issues of importance for today's entrepreneurs. Among these are: the nature of innovation, technology transfer, R&D strategies, marketing, sources of investment, entrepreneurship, university-industry relations, changes in cultural attitudes, management styles, growth cycles, and problems of acquisitions and mergers.
Magnetic Venture explains how scientific novelties were developed into important products. The first was superconductivity, from which the company developed magnets for research, magnets for unravelling the structures of molecules in the design of new drugs, and, best known to the public, magnets for body-scanning. The final chapter looks in detail at the Oxford Trust and tells how this organization has been instrumental in promoting a better environment for the formation and incubation of new science-based companies.
The story will appeal to many business academics and researchers, advisers and policy makers, the new breed of scientist/entrepreneur, and those interested in important scientific developments such as superconductivity, ultra-low temperatures, and magnetic imaging.
Magnetic Venture provides a valuable, detailed account of the develpment of Oxford Instruments. The book is unusual, being less the history than the autobiography of a business. Audrey - for 24 years a director and key figure - is an insider reporting events in which she participated. With her access to the firm's folk memomry and records and her perceptive approach, she provides a unique account of a pioneerng business.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: First Steps
Chapter 2: The Superconductor Breakthrough
Chapter 3: The Juvenile Company
Chapter 4: Triumphs and Trials
Chapter 5: The Slow Climb from the Morass
Chapter 6: Medilog
Chapter 7: Magnets for Modelling Molecules
Chapter 8: Where is the Company Going?
Chapter 9: Making the Human Body Transparent
Chapter 10: What of the Rest of the Group?
Chapter 11: Strategies for the Future
Chapter 12: The Road to Flotation
Chapter 13: The New Public Company
Chapter 14: Seeds for Future Growth
Chapter 15: Boom Years
Chapter 16: 1987
Chapter 17: The Renaissance of Oxford Magnet Technology
Chapter 18: Link Scientific and a New Japanese Initiative
Chapter 19: Helios - a Product Ahead of its Time?
Chapter 20: Through the Long Recession
Chapter 21: Issues of the Nervous Nineties
Chapter 22: Towards the End of an Era
Chapter 23: The Beginning of a New Era
Chapter 24: Bridges, Networks, and Nurseries
Afterword by Richard Coopey
