Commercialisation - Fact or Fiction? Time for a rethink.

As with all innovation, necessity becomes the driver of new ways. Worldwide we are seeing a change in how research and innovation is funded, initiating a shift to make Universities more responsible for their relevance to, and impact on, society.

The traditional way of fostering and developing commercialisation activities at Universities has not provided the outcomes we are longing for. Commercialisation is still largely a random process.

The commercialisation office should learn how to position for best success…that is try to position itself at the origin – by doing things that support the innovator. Rather than positioning for a small impact and a few partnerships, position for a large impact and allow the innovators to develop the partnerships.

Innovators want someone to help them, not to take it over. Companies want the innovator to help them, not a “middle person”…

Challenging Thinking - The words we use.

Research has shown that one particular challenge faced by many universities is the stereotypes and perceptions of business: They may see the public sector as bureaucratic, inflexible, not customer focused and difficult to deal with.

While shifting a perception or image held by people in relation to universities and their commercial arms on the whole is likely to be a long-term effort, innovative collaborative actors may start to differentiate themselves from others by using fresh terminology associated with the idea and identity they want to portray.

For example, the term ‘technology transfer office’ is well known and commonly used... If a commercial arm recognizes the essential nature of early stage partnerships between various parties in the innovation and knowledge exchange context, why is it described by words that indicate transfer rather than exchange, institution rather than people?

Here at Flinders Partners we are in the business of technology transfer and innovation. Many great ideas and technologies come from the University and are produced by the university yet industry and users don't pick them up - why?

It's a complex question and one that we'll be getting on our soapbox about!

Here's a starting list and on this soapbox we'll explore one of them in more depth:

• Opportunities need momentum - without momentum they are not valuable, often they are not in any distribution or market channel that means they will just get picked up and carried to users
• There is no such thing as technology transfer - instead there are opportunities for partnership and the sooner we recognise that simple fact, the better we will become at making partnerships.
• We spend too much time assessing opportunities in the cold hard light of their existing form and their technical pedigree, and not enough time looking for market holes and finding better ways for our people to work with others.
• The success factors must include people and the ability to adapt - just about all of our projects fail 3 times before they are successful.
• Governments aren't the solution but they can influence and incentivise innovation.
• The commercial world doesn't always know how to commercialise and the innovation world often doesn't know how to adapt innovation.
• Identifying market drivers and adding a key element to a technology can make it worth more than the technology itself.

The 'myths' of technology transfer and innovation

OK - so what's the first one about... we have many ideas and they get aired at dinner parties... not unlike research we produce many papers and thinking. The net result of that thinking is very valuable - as thinking. In the case of dinner parties it's useful to dream and to see others perspectives so you can understand the person better.

This is the stream they are in - in these cases they are like being in a filing cabinet - trotted out from time to time and then refiled. They aren't going anywhere. In fact, that's almost exactly how many innovators work with their ideas - file them and wait for a stream or distribution partner to come along where they can use them. So without the stream... they stay still. No-one is going to pick them up.

How can we fix this? - The most popular way we use is to work backwards and create the stream in parallel with the idea. In other words run the idea out to someone who might have an interest in it and then get them to commit to putting it in their stream if it works or does what they want. This is a framework for an idea.

Remember, without the stream - they are going to end up in air... or maybe someone else using them. The thing that matters is not money it's a stream or distribution channel. How else? Well, the other way is to remember the stream doesn't have to be all that big. Just about any momentum gets the idea out of the filing cabinet. Having it in motion then means you can do things with it - use it for other things - like getting a partnership with someone, a way of proving it in a small market so it can go to a bigger market someday, or just publicity. The options open up when it's in a path to market.

Rarely do companies in charge of streams, or distribution channels, search for ready made ideas, they don't need to. Instead opportunists and investors search which can still make it risky that the technology will ever make it to market.

Often though we are frightened our idea is somehow going to fail or show us up. It makes us look smart to have ideas, and it's no fun to be wrong or challenged. We should never be frightened of our ideas in use - we should be frightened of the contrary - because it means we are just hot air otherwise.

So what's our soapbox point?
Get your ideas in motion!

For more points visit us again soon. Want to give us your view? Talk to us.

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