Our Innovation centres

A key part of The Oxford Trust’s mission is to support the innovation landscape in our region. We have owned and run a number of innovation centres in Oxford since the Trust was founded 34 years ago.

Our patrons, Sir Martin and Lady Audrey Wood, experienced first-hand the challenges that face young tech entrepreneurs when trying to set up a new business. Local, affordable, flexible office space was as hard to come by when they set-up Oxford Instruments in 1959. In 1986, the Wood’s bought an old builders’ yard in Osney Mead and used the site to launch the Science and Technology Enterprise Project (STEP) Centre to support other Oxford-based science and tech start-ups. It was the first innovation centre in the region and, in fact, the UK, and a catalyst for Oxfordshire’s ecosystem of innovation incubators and science parks that we see today.

We know that many science and tech start-ups still struggle to find affordable office space. Our Oxford Centre for Innovation, or OCFI, right in the heart of Oxford, provides reasonably-priced office space, flexible meeting and conference rooms, and Make Oxford – a creative workspace for local science and tech business and entrepreneurs. We are now building a new innovation centre – the Wood Centre for Innovation, or WCFI – at Stansfeld Park in Headington, which will open in April 2019.

If you want to find out more about our innovation centres, contact Centre Director Mike Foster on [email protected] or call the Oxford Innovation team on 01865 261400.