Innovation support in academia
Your guide to starting a startup
support infrastructure in academia
Which competencies do you need to provide effective services to startups?
Scientific startup entrepreneurship requires diverse skills and challenges which can be addressed by a range of services, to be provided to R1-R4 researchers. Those guidance, information or signposting services include: entrepreneurial training, facilitating access to funding and accelerator programmes, IPR training and information, support in business plan development, market research, team building, providing regulatory environment information, facilitating access to physical infrastructure (such as co-working spaces, incubators or research infrastructure), relevant networks, internationalization (including mobility), information on available mentoring/coaching schemes, information on tax incentives and others.
In order to provide such services with high efficiency and the best quality, many diverse competencies are needed, such as: skills and access to information related to legal issues, business planning; awareness (at minimum) of the state of the art in the most attractive (as recognised by startup founders) scientific domains; communication and networking skills (in line with startup culture, with different stakeholders, including funders); knowledge of the key local startup community stakeholders and support actors; access to information relevant for scientific startup entrepreneurship, owned or maintained by the R&D organizations (physical infrastructures, mentoring schemes, PhD theses, scientific projects, calls for proposals, etc.).
What do Technology Transfer Offices do?
The primary channels of research conversion to IP are patenting and licensing activities, which, in turn, lead to either academic startups or externally-formed enterprises. Either way, a university earns income from licensing its IP. The above activities constitute the simplest but the most representative metrics for measuring the innovation capacity of a university.
Those activities, in specific actively seeking, registering, and patenting IP and managing the commercialisation of the research discoveries are supported by the Technology Transfer Offices (TTO).
Besides directly supporting bringing the research results to the market, TTOs also encourage and support researchers and students in the entire technology transfer process. They create and maintain industry partnerships that may be important for the knowledge transfer process; provide general business and legal counselling to future entrepreneurs; directly support and provide funding, resources, and connections to university spin-off companies.
TTOs are formed as internal offices (an integral part of a university, managed by its administration), external (an independent company founded by a university), or mixed entities [Read more].
Many would say that the idea of TTOs was born after the US Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which gave universities and federal laboratories ownership of their IP and the right to licence it. Formerly, the IP was retained by funding agencies. The rapidly increasing trend of spin-offs that followed was the first and probably the most representative example of how much of an impact the government could have in incentivising academic researchers to become entrepreneurs.
A typical strategy that TTOs engage in is licensing the inventions originating in a university, either to an industry partner or back to the university inventor if they started a company (university spin-off) [Read more]. TTOs can also take an equity stake in the spin-off company instead of licensing the technology. The latter strategy is more common in external TTOs.
Knowledge transfer in academia occurs also outside of TTOs, through collaborative research, across borders and sectors, joint publications, staff exchange. Although those transfers are informal and not supported by default, they can generate substantial commercial value.
How to assess the performance of technology transfer in your organisation?
The University Technology Transfer and Commercialization Index is based on data collected by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) via the Annual Licensing Activity Survey (so, data is self-reported by universities). The survey has been carried out within the AUTM community for nearly three decades.
Data about five key indicators of technology transfer success are collected by that survey: invention disclosures, new patent applications, licenses and options, gross licensing income, and startups formed [Read more]. The index considers only patents issued, licenses issued, licensing income, and startups formed.
The above data does not generate the complete picture of the capacity of one academic organization to innovate. There are many others, which are quite difficult to acquire, such as: job creation, employee wages, sales, and market capitalisation of academic-derived enterprises and firms which license IP, etc.
How do IPR offices in universities work?
IPR offices in universities encourage their employees, colleagues and students to develop and recognise intellectual property; they undertake to disseminate works developed by their employees and students, while making all reasonable efforts to respect the intellectual property rights of third parties. Their task is also to support, advise, and inform about property rights, and also recognise, evaluate and protect invention.
Staff, students and visitors, as creators of intellectual property, together with universities, have the right to the fruit of their intellectual work. These intellectual property rights are protected by the laws prescribed by their government (depending on the country).
Universities have their own IPR policies that strictly prohibit any infringement of Intellectual Property Rights, so they reserve the right to take legal and disciplinary action against any violation [Read more].
IPR offices can also work within the University Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs), or Technology Licensing Offices (TLOs), assisting faculty, staff and students with issues related to Intellectual Property protection. This includes managing, protecting, and licensing a university's Intellectual Property (IP). With the aim to inform, advise and support all members within the university in all matters of cooperation between science and industry, TTOs and OTLs are the bridge between researchers and the resources they need, connecting them to materials, funding, partnerships, collaboration, and expertise. Providing services of these offices include offers for researchers, inventors, potential investors and people at the university who want to start a business [Read more].
Some principles of successful university support and development system for startups
Every university and faculty is different, which means that every system of support and development of startups in a given institution is also unique. There probably cannot be any universal system that can serve all universities and faculties, but some principles should be considered and implemented.
In the past, universities were not hesitant to be competitive in the market, and were not overly willing to commercialise the success of scientific research, because they were guaranteed state funding. This “hands-off approach” is completely opposite to the approach that startups and entrepreneurs must have.
To be successful in the world of entrepreneurship, researchers, teachers, students, and universities need to enter a competitive and growth mindset.
Universities should accept the fact that what works for one startup does not necessarily mean that it will work for the other startup. This implies that the methodology for successful startup support cannot be firmly set in place, which contradicts the mindset of universities where everything needs to be categorised, systematically researched, and depicted. This type of thinking must be changed, at least as far as university startups are concerned. Essentially, universities should give guidelines, but should not overly micromanage [Read more].
Researchers and students need to think about startup entrepreneurship as a job, not as a side job.
Universities are places where employees feel safe and comfortable. Working on a startup is sometimes even done for the purpose of extending the duration of university jobs. By flipping this mindset and looking at startups as the main career choice, students and researchers can fully take advantage of founding startups on universities, as there they already have all the infrastructure that they need (printing rooms, tech support, machines, tools, workshops, connection to experts, easier access to funding, etc.).
The task of setting up a startup development system and measuring its success is a very difficult job. Similar to many startups, many universities get caught in empty metrics validation of their work, which is not good.
Measuring the success of the startup development system is not done by calculating how many startups collect grant funding, or how many startups are registered as companies, because this approach only hides the real picture and the real problems.
Nowhere is it written that the grant funding guarantees the success of a startup, or that a registered company is making any money. Because of that, the first step to developing a good startup support system in universities is defining the metrics of success. Some of the questions that universities should think about are: how many customers has a startup reached? How much revenue has a startup earned? [Read more]
Even though many of the people working at universities are very smart, the majority lack the business knowledge required for successful startups. This knowledge is not easy to acquire, but it can be learned. For example, a conventional practice is for corporations to outsource their R&D to universities, because it will save them money in human resources. This results in the transfer of knowledge to industries and none of the business and entrepreneurship knowledge to universities. University workers get money for the materials, a few months’ salary and free use of the machines, and in exchange they save much more money for the company, by doing the majority of the work.
Would it not it be smart for universities to form genuine joint ventures with industry? This would form a more dynamic entrepreneurial atmosphere, and would transfer business knowledge and skills from corporations to universities.
Often, when startups are confronted with failure, they try to tweak the data, or try to present it as some kind of success. This is often what leads to the collapse of startups. As failure is an essential part of life, it should not be wasted, and universities should always review failed startups and register their findings. Ask questions such as: What did the entrepreneurs do? How long were they working on the startup? How many MVPs did they test? How many potential funding sources did they find? Did they launch a product? Did they pivot?, etc. By gathering this data, measuring the results and failures, some patterns can be found, and appropriate measures can be taken to maximise the success of startups [Read more].
