Enterprise and Innovation Committee
This Committee is responsible for reviewing and supporting commercial activities across the Coventry University Group and providing assurance to the University’s Board of Governors that such activities where appropriate support the enterprise and innovation theme of the University’s corporate strategy as well as the other commercial activities.
The subsidiary companies within the Enterprise and Innovation Committee’s purview are determined by the University’s Board of Governors, which currently includes: CU Services Limited, The Futurelets Limited, PeoplesFuture Limited and Coventry University Enterprises Limited.
Enterprise and Innovation Committee (formerly Enterprise Advisory Committee) Terms of Reference
Dr David Secher
Chair of the Enterprise and Innovation Committee and Independent member of the Board of Governors
David Secher is an independent consultant in the areas of research commercialisation, intellectual property and technology transfer, in the UK and internationally. Assignments include work in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South America, Africa, and Europe. He is based in Cambridge University, where he is a Life Fellow of Gonville & Caius College.
In 2002, together with Lita Nelsen of MIT, he founded Praxis (now PraxisAuril), the leading UK knowledge exchange organisation. He served as chairman or as a director until 2014 and is now Patron. For his contributions to “creating environments that favour enterprise, specialising in the practical aspects of commercialising the results of academic research”, he was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2007.
Previous roles include Senior Bursar, Gonville & Caius College; CEO of the N8 Research Partnership; Director of Research Services, Cambridge University; Director of Drug Development, Cancer Research Campaign; Director of Monoclonal Therapeutics, Celltech Ltd.; and Tenured Group Leader, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology. As a consultant, he has advised universities, governments and individuals on commercialisation of intellectual property, as well as acting as a non-executive director of technology and investment companies.
David graduated from the Cambridge University (Churchill College) with first class honours in biochemistry. His PhD work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology was with César Milstein (Nobel Prize-winner for discovery of monoclonal antibodies). Together with Derek Burke, he made and patented the first monoclonal antibody to human interferon.
David is also a member of the Board of Governors, Strategy, Finance and Resources Committee and Research Committee.
Steve Haywood
Independent Governor
Steve started in the automotive industry after leaving school at the age of 16 and taking up a Technical Apprenticeship with Triumph Motors, part of the group which is now Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). The majority of Steve’s career was with JLR, progressing through numerous roles to eventually playing a key role in many of JLR's new model launches.
Three years of leading Value Leadership for JLR gave great knowledge and understanding of the financial drivers in the business of value management and efficiency improvement. In 2010, Steve left JLR to set up his own consultancy business and developed a portfolio of client activity helping businesses such as Healy Cars, Lotus Engineering, Proton Motor Company and a number of Tier 1 companies in their business development and product development delivery. Over the next seven years, Steve worked for Ricardo plc and Tata Technologies before retiring from full time employment in 2020 and returning to his consultancy business, through which he is currently supporting Norton Motorcycles in the UK.
