COMMERCIALISATION:The pressure is on to turn research findings into commercial sucess. But what's on offer to help a researcher or a company with their idea, asks CLAIRE O'CONNELL
‘HOW TO MAKE money from your research” is a catchy title for a workshop and, if it delivers on its promise, it will please plenty – from the researcher with an idea to the company looking for new ways boost competitiveness and the government looking for economic returns on research investment.
The workshop that cuts to the chase is run by Tom Flanagan, director of the Hothouse Technology Transfer programme and Incubation Centre at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), and it helps researchers who want to get a perspective on the commercial aspects of their work.
“We get them to write a headline – what it is, the impact it has – and I ask them to tell me about it as if I was their granny,” says Flanagan. “They find it challenging – they’re so into it, and it’s often such a small defined area that they find it difficult to expand.”
He also encourages researchers to think about how to mine the commercial value of an idea. “They understand, from an academic viewpoint, how to get papers, but from a commercial perspective, if you can develop some software around this, we can license it or develop a website.”
His approach taps into a zeitgeist that has been welling up for several years. The recession may have brought the bottom line into sharp focus recently, but since 2007, technology transfer offices at third-level institutions around Ireland have been building their capacity through Enterprise Ireland’s five-year €30 million Technology Transfer Strengthening Initiative, with the aim of helping to transfer more intellectual property (IP) to industry from research.
DIT’s Hothouse technology transfer operation has expanded under that initiative to provide more opportunities for space, support and contacts, explains Flanagan.
“Three years ago, everyone was doing research here and writing papers, but over the years we have been changing the culture and getting people to think about ,” he says.
“People coming with a good business idea are usually looking for space and networking. It is very hard to start a business in your bedroom and make it sound like an international business. If they are coming to an office and meeting other people that helps them a lot.”
For inventors who want to sound out an idea, Hothouse will assess it and do the groundwork, such as taking care of patents and licencing. But the inventors have to take that initial step forward, notes Flanagan.
“Some people get very worried about their ideas. They try to hide them and they tend to end up sitting on them for years,” he says.
“We look for the wow factor and then we go through due diligence, such as looking at the market, potential licences and patenting.”
Anyone with an idea can contact Hothouse, where the enterprise development and venture programmes work with researchers, inventors, investors and companies to fund and grow ideas to market.
But it’s not just a one-way street out of academia. Hothouse works with SMEs to flag their research needs and see if they can be met.
“A lot of these opportunities would be defined by the company. We would define the research element to them, then go to Enterprise Ireland and apply for innovation partnership,” says Flanagan.
Industry focus is also a strong presence in the Advanced Microscopy Lab (AML) at the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (Crann) at Trinity College Dublin, which offers high-tech resources to researchers and companies who need support to innovate.The AML’s high-powered microscopes allow users to get up close with biological and material samples – not just to examine them, but to alter them too.
“We are doing nano-scale science so the stuff is pretty small, and you need tools to visualise what you are doing,” explains Crann’s director, Professor John Boland. “But you also need tools to be able to make structures on those length scales.”
In practice, the instruments open up new ways to work with electronics components and medical devices such as stents and to analyse biological materials such as cancer cells.
The AML provides an obvious string to the researchers' bows, but what about industry?
"We are very much interested in helping the firms think about where their road map is leading and providing materials and ideas as to how to meet their road map needs," says Boland.
The facility, he says, can also offer a sandbox environment for testing out ideas.
"We are looking at very different structures or new ways to do things – new kinds of devices that people have never made and seeing how would they work and, 'if they do work this way, how do you build it?'."
Having the AML and its technical experts as a "calling card" helps Crann reach out to various companies and encourage them to innovate through research.
"We have a pipeline to hundreds of companies we have talked with," says Boland. But he notes that they are sometimes initially doubtful. "Small businesses are worried about Friday – can they make their pay cheques? – so if we come in and tell them we have tools we think can solve their problem, they are very sceptical," he says.
"We need to give them the confidence to put their foot into the research and development space, to understand what the products are, that they are really developing, what the limitations of those products are and whether there are some issues of quality control that they are not really addressing because they have no scope to address them."
One company that expresses no doubts about the benefits is Cellix Ltd – a Trinity spin-out that develops platforms and biochips for the pharmaceutical industry to improve drug candidate testing.
The AML facility will help the company further develop the technology, evaluate the surface properties of their pipeline products and engage with Crann in a European Framework 7 project to design new diagnostic devices, explains Cellix chief technical officer Dmitry Kashanin.
"To have it in Ireland is very convenient . . . having the possibility just to go down and talk to them and to see equipment in action is just brilliant."
The companionship of others can ease the startup journey
TURNING AN idea into commercial success can be a long road – with much of it uphill. But one inventor has found that the companionship of other startups can ease the journey and help overcome some of the bumps.
Barry Redmond has been developing the idea of a personal power meter to measure cycling performance – but this one fits into a cycling shoe, so the rider doesn't have to switch it between bikes.
"It fits underneath, as part of the shoe, and measures the forces as the cyclist is pressing down on the pedal," explains Redmond, chief executive of Brim Brothers. "It required a [year] of research and development."
Redmond is currently in the DIT Hothouse Venture Programme, where he finds the contact with like-minded innovators a boost.
"What I think it really offers is the encouragement and the atmosphere. The workshops and seminars are useful, but the sharing of experiences and mutual encouragement among people who are on the programme [is the best aspect]," he says.
"You find people who are having the same problem as you, and at a workshop, if you raise something, the whole group will try to solve your problem with you."
Brim Brothers is one of several ventures that the Hothouse programme has nurtured since 2001, and many of its graduates have reached greater heights.
DecaWave, a fabless semiconductor company, now employs 24 people in their Dublin, Asia and Europe offices, and their tiny Scensor chip (pictured below) for real-time location systems and ultra-low-power wireless transceivers has interested customers from around the globe.
But when they went through the Hothouse programme, they were just starting out.
"We were three people when we joined Hothouse, and grew to about eight while there," says chief executive, Ciaran Connell. "Being part of the Hothouse incubation programme helped hone our story – we were developing and redeveloping our business plan, our investment strategy and our 'Go To Market' plan. Being surrounded by other players in the startup world helped make our story better; being critiqued by other startup people is good preparation for being critiqued by [venture capitalists] and the like."
The experience paid off. Now they are closing the funding needed to take their chip into full-scale production.
"Having raised and spent €5 million we have a chip which there are 500 companies waiting worldwide," says Connell. "We can locate objects to a precision of 10cm indoors, through walls. We are very good at what we do.
"But we are also experienced enough to thank those who got us to where we are, and one of them is Hothouse. Without them it would have been very difficult to get started."
When innovation and hospitals mix
WHEN YOU are looking to move medical discoveries toward the end user, co-locating your facility with a major hospital helps bring researchers, clinicians and patients together.
It's a pattern being set by facilities around the country, and the Clinical Translational Research and Innovation Centre (C-Tric) is no exception.
Locating the centre on the Altnagelvin Hospital campus has had another unforeseen benefit, according to C-Tric's business development manager, Barry Henderson.
"Companies come to hospitals to sell products," he says. "It's not something we had thought about, but companies are through the doors here all the time so there's a natural link with the marketplace."
Aside from natural industry exposure, the main thrust of the centre – a joint initiative between the University of Ulster, the Weston Trust and Derry City Council – is to offer space, facilities and access to clinical expertise and patients.
"We have academic research projects, clinicial trials and space for companies to incubate," says Henderson. "Ideally, what we are trying to do for companies is identify a clinical champion, someone who will be as excited about your product idea as you are. What you want is for one of these clinicians to do a study to clinically validate your idea, then go to a conference and give a key paper at a key conference and say, 'this is a better way to get results'."
Other big demands in translating discoveries to the clinic include access to patient data and industry-standard quality assurance of facilities. Henderson sees C-Tric offering a valuable resource for the island of Ireland.
The centre, which has been open for around 18 months, is currently building itself up as an innovation hub, and Henderson says he would like to see a more open-innovation model in Ireland, where entrepreneurs and innovators get greater access to university-based intellectual property.
"I think there is talent under our noses that we are in danger of ignoring," he says. "There is huge potential for those people to take forward some of these ideas that are being under-exploited."
