The Roadblocks of Commercialising Cutting-Edge Tech: The Pain Points of Tech Transfer Offices
University staff to support academics in translating their research into commercial products and services are critical to bridge the gap between the academic ecosystem and industry. The commercialisation pathway outside of a university can often be long and difficult to navigate. Working within a large complex organisation such as a university adds an additional layer or two (or three).
This article identifies and highlights a number of pain points that Tech Transfer Offices and university professional staff may encounter on their journey to successfully commercialising new innovations.
Lack of Resources
Like all things in life, not all universities are equal, in that resources in some universities are plentiful and the staff numbers high.
For those not so well-endowed, lack of resources is a very significant and often morale crushing barrier that can create burn out and cause undue stress to the individuals who are ‘trying to do it all’.
The position of commercialisation professional is one that requires a wide and varied skillset from great people skills, attention to detail, a thirst for getting the deal done, and multitasking – to name but a few. When faced with a large daily inbox of emails spanning tasks across the university (often the case within smaller universities), administrative duties, and managing relationships with internal and external parties, the lack of resources can hinder the ability to translate research into commercially viable technologies.
Managing the day to day creates the danger that administrative duties become the focus rather than the commercial deals. Modeling and developing a strong commercial strategy have to be fit around other work commitments which can lead to long days and added stress.
So what’s the solution?
The simplest – and at the same time most difficult – answer is more resources. Whether through commercial revenue flowing back into the commercialisation team to contract additional help or through Government grants, greater resourcing of people, tools and expertise is needed to successfully translate research.
Failing that, universities can only prioritise their limited resources on those innovations most likely to result in measurable impact.
Choosing winners is tough as anyone familiar with commercialisation will know and it results in potentially many missed opportunities for those innovations that don’t make the cut but which could, in time, be the next big thing.
Turnover of Staff
Universities can suffer from a high turnover of staff in the commercialisation team for multiple reasons, including burn out, perceived low salary, or lack of resources, succession planning and career progression.
As commercialisation professionals come and go, academics become less willing to engage and repeat the same story again and again to someone new. This turnover of commercialisation personnel can prove to be a real obstacle and stifle the progress of technology commercialisation.
There is always benefit in a fresh perspective from new personnel and learning new ways of doing things. However, when there is no continuity and often limited systems to capture data and information, commercialisation suffers.
So what’s the solution?
There are many different models that have been shown to work where professional staff can spread their wings in new ventures and activities, while staying with the university or very closely connected. These models help keep entrepreneurial personalities interested and challenged, and also create fantastic professional development and network-building opportunities.
Importantly, they provide continuity in corporate knowledge, as well as the opportunity for personnel to bring their new skills and expanded networks back to the university.
Industry-University Engagement
The gap between academia and industry is talked about regularly. For commercialisation personnel, it can be challenging to strike the correct balance between looking outwards and engaging with industry, and looking inwards and managing internal university relationships.
Getting the right balance is difficult with a small commercialisation team, and both internal and external relationship building are equally important to successful commercialisation outcomes. The danger is that a reactive approach always dominates (that is, whoever makes the loudest noise gets most, if not all, of the attention). Invariably, that results in commercialisation staff spending most of their time on internal university matters, with little time left over for industry engagement.
So what’s the solution?
The solution is not straightforward to implement but it essentially involves adopting a more proactive approach to industry and university engagement. Instead of commercialisation staff spending all their time reacting to whatever is the day’s latest emergency, having a structured engagement plan in place with sufficient resourcing to implement it and internal support could be part of the fix.
Plans inevitably change, and those urgent matters still need to be addressed. However, an overarching engagement plan with scheduled tasks and events will help keep on top of both industry and academic relationships. Well-planned events can ‘dig two holes with one shovel’1 and encourage the merging of the two ecosystems, such as industry-academia problem-solving or networking events. These events and meeting formats create opportunities for researchers and industry professionals to interact, facilitating knowledge exchange and building mutually beneficial partnerships.
Marketing and Storytelling
Is there ever enough time to write engaging stories? For a resource-poor commercialisation team, time and resources can be a barrier to getting a great story out there. Working with the marketing team and academic experts, an engaging and informative story can take a huge amount of time as it requires all three parties to collaborate and input their expert knowledge.
The second barrier can be deciding when to publish and release the story. Confidentiality requirements can limit the content of a story and the release may not align with a commercial partner’s strategy.
However, without celebrating the commercial wins and letting the community know, commercialisation (and in particular licensing deals) can be hidden. Identifying marketing opportunities and finding the right time to publish a story can be challenging, however it is vital to showcase the often years of effort from academics, industry and commercialisation professionals and the real impact that the research translation and knowledge transfer has generated.
So what’s the solution?
Depending on the organisation and its resources, planning the marketing strategy in parallel with the development and progress of the technology to be commercialised would be a solid and rewarding process to put in place.
If working with an industry partner, then early communication of the strategy and being clear about the partner’s expectation for reviewing and approving material before it is published also heads off potential problems down the track.
As marketing in the commercialisation space is often a team activity, the team will all need to be aligned and working together to be ready to publish – when the time is right.
Funding and Investment Challenges
Access to funding and investment is a significant barrier that university commercialisation professionals and academics encounter in their research translation journey. Often early stage technologies require funding to demonstrate proof of concept and to undergo “fail fast” testing to fully prove a concept and get some compelling early data. Securing this funding, whether from an internal university grant or from external industry or government funding can be extremely difficult and often a huge barrier to innovation and commercialisation.
So what’s the solution?
Active and early engagement with industry and potential investors (with the right IP protection and agreements in place) and showcasing successful commercialisation stories can help gain early interest and develop relationships to enable collaboration and funding at the right stage.
Leveraging grants and funding schemes dedicated to technology commercialisation can also provide the financial boost needed to bring innovations to market. Examples of such include the fantastic Australia’s Economic Accelerator funding scheme (about which we have previously written and summarised in a handy infographic) which should help assist with the funding gap.
University professional staff who support academics to translate their research into commercial products and services face numerous pain points when commercialising technology. We’ve touched on some commonly discussed topics. However, they are by no means complete. From limited resources and funding challenges, these obstacles can hinder the successful translation of groundbreaking research into impactful products and services. However, by forging partnerships, seeking commercial guidance, bridging the academia-industry gap, implementing effective marketing strategies and somehow managing to keep all balls in the air, university commercial teams can overcome these roadblocks and pave the way for the successful commercialisation of cutting-edge innovations (and many are doing just that).
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