Generating an opportunities pipeline

The starting point is to move beyond the inability to deal with the quantity of new disclosures, and to move into the proactive exploitation and encouragement of new ideas from the research base. The closer we can move to the 'exploitation principle' the better.

Yet many university disclosure processes are almost designed to curtail the number of opportunities that can be considered and progressed. Perhaps this is no surprise given the lack of scalability within existing closed university-based systems. To do otherwise might simply raise expectations that cannot be fulfilled. More than that, many of the drivers for exploitation are out of sync with the new environment. As mentioned previously in this infoKit, venture capital drivers will tend towards processes that only support the 'lightning-strike' propositions. Even, the somewhat dated HEFCE guide 'Related companies: guidance for higher education institutions' conflates the Related Company used by the university as a vehicle, and the spin-out company, and consequently dwells mainly on warning against the formation of ventures that might fail. This is a peculiarly anti-entrepreneurial restriction.

But no matter how sophisticated or developed these processes are, one overriding fact remains: No one really knows which propositions will succeed. It's too early to be sure, and only the market will determine their fate, and the precise business model that works. Yet we pretend that we can prejudge this within an internal university process. Hence the focus has, all to often, been on polishing the sophistication and complexity of this process. Variants of this even get passed on as 'best practice'.

Many will have seen the complex flow charts that knowledge transfer (KT) practitioners have shared with pride as they have refined their selection process. Others will have appropriated 'new' questions from each others' Invention Record forms. Many of us have sat on, or presented to, universities company formation committees. In the view of KT 2.0, the sooner that we dispense with this rigmarole the better for KT and the economy.