Turning university innovation into commercial reality

A new book, co-edited by Dr Rory O'Shea, of the UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business, examines ways universities can be more successful in creating high-impact spin-off businesses. Building Technology Transfer Within Research Universities: An Entrepreneurial Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2014) analyses the factors that lie behind successful business spin-offs from university research.

In the book, which O'Shea co-edited with Thomas J Allen, leading international academics in the technology transfer field examine a number of areas critical to the promotion of start-ups on campus, including the policies, structures and practices of 14 international universities across Europe, Asia and the US, with the aim of helping other universities to enhance the impact of their technology transfer programmes.

O’Shea’s focus is not so much on what has been done wrong as on what changes can be made to improve matters. “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is regularly cited as an example of fostering a start-up culture that benefits the regional economy,” he says. “With good reason: MIT-alumni-founded firms using university-derived technology now employ 1.7 million people and generate $1 trillion in annual global revenues.”

Not surprisingly, there is increasing pressure from governments to see universities emulate this model and generate some economic return from research investments. “They need to bridge the disconnect between researchers and the commercial marketplace,” O’Shea says. “They must identify and replicate processes that are proven to work, facilitating a swift movement of technology from research laboratories to the frontline of industry.”

Part of the problem until now, he says, is the way success has been measured in many universities. “If you just focus on the number of patents or inventions without looking at the impact of the innovations, you can misread their value,” he says.

“What we have tried to do in the book is identify the universities which are moving away from the old bureaucratic, centralised control model of technology transfer with little impact to one where the focus is not so much on what is good for the universities but on what is good for society.”

Blue skies

Interestingly, this doesn’t mean that pioneering blue skies research will be sacrificed on the altar of commercial impact and economic returns. The opposite is actually the case as O’Shea points out that industry ultimately wants to work with the leading academics in the field. “They don’t want universities to use old technologies to solve problems for them. They can do that for themselves in their own labs.”

He outlines a number of strategies universities can adopt on the road to emulating MIT. The first relates to the academic excellence required to attract top industry partners. “Universities with entrepreneurial ambitions must attract and retain star academic researchers capable of winning grants and enhancing the institution’s research profile,” he says. “They will invariably have industry contacts and an instinct for spotting a commercial opportunity.”

According to O’Shea, these star academics help to create what he describes as “steeples of excellence” that can steer faculty and students towards research that has a strategic fit with the university.

“By building up faculty strength in a few but significant research areas, and by attracting talent that is most capable of winning research grants in the chosen areas, the university will establish a technological foundation that encourages entrepreneurship to emerge. This has proved very successful for MIT and Stanford.”

Knowing what you are trying to achieve is also crucial. “Commercial ideas are more likely to emerge from laboratories under the watch of academic leaders who have a strong belief in what they are doing and what can be achieved,” he says. “Without a common leadership vision and supporting structures it is hard to break down the walls that separate research from commercial success. “

He cites the National University of Singapore (NUS) and MIT as examples of universities where this has been the case. "NUS has played a pivotal role in Singapore's emergence as a knowledge economy because it had the strategic vision to embrace entrepreneurial development. By providing industry partnership and entrepreneurship support, it created organisational vehicles to spearhead change that has translated NUS research into commercially viable innovation.

“Similarly, MIT’s central mission for technology commercialisation that moves technology rapidly to industry for societal benefit, serves as a compass point for its academic leaders, keeping the institution on track as it makes decisions about resource allocation and research activities.”

There is also a need to foster an entrepreneurial culture on campus. “Universities have to change the mindset of students and academics to make them think and act more like entrepreneurs,” O’Shea says. “Integrated and coordinated structures must be put in place to support the rollout of entrepreneurship programmes.

"MIT, NUS and the University California, San Diego (UCSD), achieve this through entrepreneurship centres, providing entrepreneurship education to all disciplines across the university in a coordinated and seamless manner."

Rewards are also important. He says that the traditional approach to technology licensing agreements by universities has been bureaucratic and legalistic and not conducive to swift action or relationship building. “A streamlined approach in the identification, protection and commercialisation of university intellectual property is essential for encouraging academic entrepreneurship,” says O’Shea. “Deals must be negotiated around IP that are mutually beneficial to the university and entrepreneur. Universities must be prepared to forgo an immediate financial return in order to promote new partnerships that will benefit it in the longer term.”

Leave of absence

He also advises universities to be more flexible in how they offer leave of absence to academics to pursue commercial opportunities. “In Stanford and MIT academics can take leave of absence every six years to pursue commercial ventures. They not only become serial entrepreneurs as a result they also come back better lecturers. We just have a very rigid system of sabbaticals which does not encourage entrepreneurship by academics.”

In this context he believes that universities must look beyond short-term programmes and build a culture where entrepreneurial behaviour is active throughout the campus and commercialisation is encouraged.

Finally, and very pertinently for Ireland, he says that universities should develop policies that encourage closer relationships with industry and government. "An innovative feature of Stanford is its tight coupling of teaching, research, and technology transfer through close working relationships with industry.

“At MIT, active engagement between the university and the industrial community has become the very essence of the institution. When two cultures are linked through concrete institutional mechanisms – entrepreneurial science in the university with entrepreneurial enterprise in the wider community – a foundation is in place to build companies, create jobs, and grow wealth.”