Non cash value propositions of community membership

Modest or minimal cash liquidity is crucial to getting beyond the common kind of portals, where everyone is a seller and no one is a buyer. It's the critical spark that the university can provide. But none of this negates what has been said before about the importance of non-cash motivators for the individual. This is even more important at an aggregate scale than it is at the individual level, for the very reason that some market actors will work early, some later and some not at all.

The KT 2.0-style market needs a wide range of players and skills sets. The scope required for this range of skills means that not all the 'panel' of entrepreneur-consultants are likely to immediately benefit from these cash transactions in the marketplace, if at all. At the Universities of Leeds and York for example, a great deal of thought has been given to the range of other value propositions that help retain interest in the market, until such time as the bulk of market players gain some concrete benefit. This is important until such time as the vibrancy of the market offers sufficient attractiveness to continue to bring new entrants or to retain existing participants.

So the KT 2.0 market requires a layer of community benefit or non-obvious or immediate cash benefit in order to keep it dynamic. Of course this includes the future cash propositions that may have even more attractiveness - such as the opportunity of an equity/royalty share, and even an MD role with salary. However, it should include the more intangible and more easily given benefits of community membership.

This can be represented in a spectrum:

This approach mixes aspects of a market incentive with aspects of a community of practice. Ultimately, however the driving dynamic is to mainstream access to potentially valuable university IP opportunities, and facilitate early access to that pipeline for the most entrepreneurial agents. Direct resource to help exploit that potential, and facilitation to indirect resource that will be required to reach the market, are the facilitating dynamics.