Saturday 27 March 2010
What is commercialisation?
It’s all too easy to get hung up on definitions, but for the record, the AIC defines commercialisation as “the conversion of an idea or knowledge into a replicable product or service that delivers value to a market."
Often, governments and other stakeholders get tied up in knots confusing intellectual property (IP), patents, research, and venture capital with commercialisation, when in fact these are merely enablers. Worse, such arguments convey the impression that commercialisation is all about lab coats and university start up companies. These things can be important, but for an institute named the Australian Institute for Commercialisation, it is all about “conversion”.
An idea or knowledge is much broader than IP, and conversion can be much broader than creating a start up company. The “research commercialisation” pathway of housing patented IP in a start up company and attracting venture capital might be where it all starts for the biotech industry, but for most of the economy, commercialisation is couched in terms of assembling the right skills, ideas, and know-how to take a new service or product to market.
In fact, the AIC does work very closely with university commercialisation offices to assist in the “research commercialisation” process by providing Commercialisation Bootcamps, commercialisation frameworks, and IP discovery and evaluation services, or by helping them establish collaborations with industry. However, it is in the broader economy, away from research, helping to convert ideas, where we are able to make a greater economic impact, for example by working with entrepreneurs (see the later story about Ideas2Market).
To go back to the current AIC ENews please click here.
