The business of academic research

EVERY YEAR, research projects are undertaken at Irish third-level institutions, and some have the potential to succeed as commercial enterprises.

However, getting the idea from the research stage to being a viable business proposition takes more than academic skill.

Researchers who have already been through the process agree that a mix of business skills and academic know-how is essential for running a successful spin-out company.

This is where Enterprise Ireland steps in, offering business skills and training to academic researchers who want to see their projects take that leap into the commercial environment.

Declan Dagger, winner of Enterprise Ireland’s inaugural One to Watch award, is about to take that step into the unknown.

The Trinity College Dublin (TCD) researcher is part of an academic project on the cusp of becoming a spin-out company that aims to bring new e-learning technologies to Irish firms and educational institutions.

The project, which is the product of several years of research at TCD and is a collaboration between the departments of computer science and psychiatry, promises a personalised, dynamic e-learning experience tailored to each individual user.

Dagger received his award at the recent From Bench to Boardroom – Commercialising Irish Research event, Enterprise Ireland’s first applied research forum, where researchers gathered to share their views and experiences on turning an academic project into a business.

Dagger says he has experienced few obstacles to his project and its commercialisation, but notes that he has had some luck in this regard.

“There’s a certain degree of conflict of interest between academia and commercialisation,” he notes.

However, Dagger says he was given “pretty much free rein” in commercialising the e-learning project, thanks to the support of Enterprise Ireland through funding and advice.

“Being an academic and a researcher, you go and research what it actually takes to start up a company, but every start-up is completely different. There are certain things you know you need to do. [Enterprise Ireland] checks on you and makes sure you are ticking those boxes as you go along,” he says.

Gerard Lacey, a researcher who attended the event, is taking a second shot at commercialising an idea. He has already commercialised one of his projects through Haptica, which uses simulators to train surgeons for keyhole surgery, and has decided that it is worth taking the risk again.

Describing himself as an “ideas junkie”, Lacey is close to commercialising a new project – a monitor which tracks the techniques people use to wash their hands in a healthcare or food environment, to ensure they are washing their hands correctly.

He says that, in the academic world, it is easier to take on “riskier” research projects. “It would be very difficult to do that kind of research in a commercial world,” he says.

“Venture capital in Ireland is really not suited to taking large technical risks, understandably – it’s not what their role is. I knew I could fly out a couple of different ideas in the academic world through the support of Enterprise Ireland and then bring them back out to commercialisation in the relative near term.”

However, this funding can also present a challenge in the long run. “One of the real challenges is that there is a huge amount of support in the university environment but, the minute you step out [of it], that transition is a little tricky. The type of funding available completely drops off,” says Lacey.

“There’s a very sudden drop in what Enterprise Ireland can do for you because of the various legal structures they are working in. There’s a valley that needs to be crossed; we need to work creatively on how to make that valley less steep and less dangerous.”

He adds: “Incentivising the business community to get involved in research while it’s still in academia would be one way to do that.”

Barry Downes, meanwhile, is an old hand at bringing research from the bench to the boardroom.

As executive director of innovation and commercialisation at the Telecommunications Software Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology, he has seen several projects that began at the centre spin out and become a success.

In fact, one of the projects has even spun out its own firm – a great success for the TSSG and the company in question.

Staff from the centre often move out with these companies to work with them on a full-time basis.

“If you have a full life-cycle research centre, you have your academic programme on one side, and on the other you have people who are very market-orientated who might have a product management background or who might have run a company before. One of the key things we do is bring all these people together,” says Downes.

One of the centre’s most recent projects is FeedHenry, which helps users personalise webpages through the use of RSS/Atom feed aggregation and analysis. FeedHenry uses widgets to deliver content to users, plugging in to a business’s online assets and customising the content for the firm.

“Being involved in research and the commercialisation of research is an amazing experience,” says Downes. “It’s fun for a start, it’s really interesting, and just the sheer thrill when a company is created and some of our guys go into that company, and then hire other people as well.”