The Perfect ‘Innovation’ Storm
Tom Hockaday, Managing Director, Isis Innovation Ltd
February 2009
The opportunities for business to capitalise on university technologies have never been greater, for the straightforward reasons described in this article.
- Universities are better resourced and better able to present commercialisable technologies to industry.
- Industry is increasingly open-minded to the opportunities from adopting an open-innovation model.
Combining these two forces highlights the tremendous potential for growing new business opportunities based on university technologies.
- Now there is a third factor promoting the opportunities for commercialising unversity technologies up the business agenda: the global economic downturn, or recession.
‘Innovate or Die’ may never have been a more relevant call than it is today. Companies that can see opportunity out of adversity will thrive over the next few years. Companies that fail to innovate will struggle in slowing sectors with shrinking global markets.
Isis Innovation is a world leader in university technology transfer. Isis has successfully licensed-out hundeds of technologies to new and existing companies, matched the expertise of academic consultants to business needs in hundreds of instances, and is now advising universities, business and government on how to develop their technology transfer and innovation management activities on a world-wide basis.
It is clear from UK and international experience that governments are pouring increasing levels of resource in to support the publicly funded research base in identifying, protecting and marketing new technologies. The purpose of this is to increase the social, economic and policy benefits derived from publicly-funded research. In the last twenty years university technology transfer has grown up to a well-organised, professional activity. In recent years Isis has led in this field through its activities, outputs and thought-leadership.
The Open Innovation concept was created by Dr Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director, Center for Open Innovation, University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business. His publication “Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology” in 2003 describes how organisations will benefit by opening up their innovation funnels, bringing in technologies from other organisations and exporting their ideas to reach new markets.
The global recession is forcing companies to identify new markets for their existing products and identify new technologies to support new products. There is more than enough business jargon to go around as game-changing technologies create opportunity solutions in the white space of new offerings to new customers …. The point is clear: world economics are changing, and each business needs to change in response to this.
Today’s markets present challenges which companies can respond to by embracing open innovation and engaging with universities as sources of new ideas and technologies. Isis provides world-class technologies and consultancy expertise to help your business.
For further information, please contact:
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