Organising consultants and tools for consultants

At the Universities of Leeds and York all of this market activity takes place via the 'New Opportunities Group', which is a shared online community into which the early opportunities that either university wishes to share, are placed.

Enabling technology is not revealed
The shared group is a closed group within Leeds Innovation Network (LIN) and York Innovation Network (YIN) into which only pre-qualified consultants and intermediaries are allowed
All participants sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that cover all KTOs sharing opportunities within the market

This group is a shared group which is accessible from each individual network. It therefore allows the grouping and sharing of all the potential external consultants/agents that are available to work on either University's projects. From the consultant's point of view it aggregates opportunities from a number of buyers into one market.

A careful methodology has been developed for sharing new opportunities with the consultants in the group. When mailing out opportunities to this group and asking for feedback, care is taken to batch the number of opportunities so that meaningful ranking can take place, whilst ensuring that those responding are not burdened with too many opportunities to consider - even though this is at a very outline level. Within this New Opportunities Group there is also a private forum of respective Knowledge Transfer Offices (KTOs) to share information on performance/capabilities of consultants if they wish to.

Tools for the consultants

As referred to in the Value proposition spectrum the New Opportunities Group also contains a forum for the storing of information and tools that will help the consultants work with the University, set expectations, and reduce haggling.

Tools

The tools contained in the New Opportunities Group at Leeds and York include administrative documents eg consultants invoicing procedures, Confidential Disclosure Agreements (CDAs) or any other documents that the consultants require to interact with the host KTO. Importantly this includes a template Outline Proposal for Commercialisation Form, which is completed by a consultant to express their interest in a project. It is this form, along with the consultant's CV that is forwarded to an academic for them to view and evaluate a consultant's interest, expertise and commercial steer on the intelligence of their project. The key here is to keep transaction costs low and to make this easy and templated.

Indeed some of the work that would have been carried out by the KTO staff is outsourced to the consultant. For example, CDAs tended to be frequent and the KTO at the University of Leeds found itself getting bogged down with handling them. So instead the University moved to creating a clear easily used CDA template that the consultant could complete for approval only by the KTO, thereby giving the consultant the ability to speed up engagement and allowing the KTO to remove burdensome activity.

Funding intelligence

Information and resources are made available to consultants to assist them in finding further pots of money that they may be able to draw into the project. Announcements of proof of concept awards are advertised in this forum including more detailed version of the funding pathways mentioned before.

The rules of play

Finally, the group contains the Rules of Membership for participation. Again this is partly to set expectations, but also to allow participants to appreciate that the group only functions effectively if both parties are not attempting to renegotiate the terms of the deal with each engagement. For transaction cost to remain low, engagement is largely on a templated basis. In addition, the KTO has been through this loop many times and will be aware of common problems. Hence the FAQs can be recorded, kept up to date and new entrants (consultants or new KTOs) can be advised of them.

Summary and take away points

It's easy to join in the existing community around the Universities of Leeds and York if using the same platform. If not, then creating a marketplace is achievable if the KTO:

uses the right tools to identify a cohort of good quality business development entrepreneurs that are carefully screened and pre-qualified
makes it evident from the beginning that the KTO has the resource to act as a buyer early on, otherwise no one will really engage
supplements the cash required to start actively acting as a buyer with non-cash motivations
provides a good supply of quality IP and makes it clear that additional upside will be made available to those that succeed (we will come back to the mechanisms for this)

It helps to build a clear framework as to how the KTO will shift away from reliance on its own cash, business models and sole provision of IP
Attend to good practice with regard to disclosure of IP into the public domain
Need to ensure that there is enough in it for the community
Make sure that the KTO deploys all the right tools to suppress the transaction cost of operating the market (all of these are available online in the KT 2.0 marketplace that the Universities of Leeds and York operate now)
Increasingly adding to and replenishing the membership of each KTO group, or if they are in cooperation then shared groups, is key to finding the breadth of skills and to ensuring a crowd sufficient to proving meaningful feedback. Make sure that the KTOs are constantly refreshing the community with new players and new skills sets. If agents prove over time to not be up to it, consider relegating them
The growth of the existing market is drawing attention and the aggregated purchasing power is likely to ensure continued expansion of the market and its skills.