TenU has been many years in the making, growing out of the UK from the early 2000s into the international collaboration it is today. Over these years, the growing pre-TenU UK formations met up to share effective practices as well as challenges, advise government and write occasional policy papers. The full international ten-member group came together in 2019, and in 2020 secured funding from Research England and generous support from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to formalise the collaboration, deepen its exchanges and widen its communications with governments and the wider tech transfer community.

I joined TenU in June 2020 to lead the realisation of TenU’s vision. Here I report on my first year by focusing on three significant achievements.

Remixing Music Studies: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Cook was published back in August 2020, a surreal time during the pandemic when I had just started a new job. A strong team of four of us - Eric Clarke, Ross Cole, Matthew Pritchard and I - had embarked in this project four years ago, during my last year as a Leverhulme Fellow at Cambridge. Nick had been an incredible PhD supervisor to me and had later also turned into a skilful mentor. But beyond the personal, here are three reasons why I have always admired Nick's work.

As part of my on-boarding at TenU, I was offered an extensive technology transfer (TT) induction programme. Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation office of the University of Cambridge, offered me its own TT induction programme. Meanwhile, Columbia Technology Ventures, the technology transfer office at Columbia University, suggested I join its free introductory course Intellectual Property for Entrepreneurs. In addition to that, I had the opportunity to attend the course Fundamentals of TT offered by ASTP, the European association of knowledge transfer professionals. I embarked on all three. This was quite an intense experience but an enlightening and fun one.

For those who have asked and those who are considering different pathways into TT, I offer an overview of what these courses taught me and what I liked about them.

Collective management organisation PPL is known around the world for being one of the most well-managed organisations of its kind. Yet, on talking to session musicians not all seemed that straightforward. In this independent study I examine the experience of UK performers using PPL. I consider the effect of the regulatory framework on the provision of transparency to PPL’s performer members by drawing on primary sources including interviews with performers, PPL’s regulation and its public-facing material. Despite difficulties faced by performers vis-à-vis PPL, I ultimately side with a large body of literature suggesting that performers are best off in an environment that supports CMO’s monopoly status. The resulting peer-reviewed article can be found here.