Getting going... Igniting a KT market and community

Difficulties in igniting a market

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 JISC infoNet

Getting any new market place to actually work is not a trivial task but with the right mix of ingredients in the right proportions it is possible. Creating a market for the outsourcing of certain (core) commercialisation activities requires, at least, combining the ideas (A), the people (B) and the market-pull (C). However to establish a dynamic that will work requires a fourth ingredient. B is critical to connecting C and A, but B (the people required to engage in finding the route to market) will only seriously engage if there is something genuinely of benefit for them. They need to see the market lubricated, so to speak, with some short-term benefit. They need to see that there is a 'first tank of petrol' and to see that first spark to ignite some activity.

The existence of a panel of competent people and the seeding of that community with good ideas is not enough to ignite a market. It needs trade, and trade requires sellers, but above all, it needs buyers. For success, that trade has to happen early.

Commercialisation and technology transfer sites, and 'portals', are now common. Many have been established and died and most have failed to transcend the 'yellow pages' conundrum (where sellers have been encouraged to congregate online in the hope that trade will take place between them - it rarely does). Previous initiatives like Acindus in the 90s, and I-Tech Partner in early 2000s were perhaps before their time, but fatally they placed the onus on the universities to act as (passive) sellers. The focus was to aggregate their IP-wares and to look for industry buyers, but with the speculative nature and the effort required, insufficient momentum was generated to attract serious industry participation and in turn the KTOs lost interest. This 'if we build it they will come' activity continues.

Examples of functioning innovation markets

Other, and more successful, efforts are using crowd sourcing to overcome this, and are starting from the needs of industry and buyers. Projects like IP Net, Innocentive, Yet2.com and Ninesigma are operating working marketplaces because there are buyers from the start. However, none of these have yet touched on the core KTO processes. Although, undoubtedly more could be made of these markets, none of them allow the KTOs to use their markets as a primary mechanism for matching university-owned IP and innovative outputs to market pull.

Certainly, and crucially, these markets do not work for finding people to undertake the business development, proof of commercial concept, filtering validation, and route to market work required to make the matching of university IP possible. This activity will not take place over a portal alone.

The University KTO as a buyer

If the old equation is reversed and the starting point is for the university to act as the active buyer (not the seller) in a marketplace of small, individual consultants and intermediaries, the equation is immediately changed. The university can proactively create a market because the university is buying technology transfer services and skills, which are much more widely available than the rare end-licensee! This allows an intermediary step to be taken towards creating a functioning market-place in which other agents are drawn into to assisting with trading very specific technology 'haves' against technology 'wants'.

This introduction of cash, (along with a stake in the outcome) generates interest and activity that creates the spark required. This, in turn, brings the market pull and other resource required which, curiously, makes it easier to sell and telegraph university technology 'haves' into the marketplace. As well as amplifying the sales activity of the KTO and facilitating 'pull', this engagement filters and overcomes validation issues and, crucially, it outsources the onerousness of this activity, which is another key reason these portals had failed.

So some cash is required to ignite the process. Some universities will have significant resource to devote to this activity, for instance: larger institutions, those that have done well under the HEIF settlement, and those that have independent resource for commercialisation. Others will not be so well resourced.

Thankfully, the cash required to ignite this:

• is much less than would be required if the KTO was to employ a person or two to do a fraction of the work
• need not all come from the university itself - indeed it would be better that most of it does not
• is better utilised if it is aimed at projects that are able to draw down external match, which is externally validated

The KT 2.0 approach is to outsource as much as possible (other than the core processes and the thinking) and, clearly, there is no better business model than to find ways to introduce the cash from elsewhere. This is covered in more detail in Finding cash to ignite the market.