otrdiena, 2013. gada 26. februāris

Role of students in commercialization process



“Stay hungry, stay foolish”[1] wishes Steve Job’s, one of greatest innovators of all times[2], to Stanford’s graduate students in his famous commencement speech, indicating that such state of mind could also be a key attribute towards successful innovators career. If so, then shouldn’t students be also actively involved in process of commercialization of science and technology as, besides other benefits, such state of mind could still be naturally present? Indeed, if we look around, we see plenty of examples, where particularly students or young people have been the ones, who start business, also in knowledge-demanding fields, starting from famous IT faces like Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg and others and ending up with myself at other end of spectrum as I have been engaged in commercialization attempt of particular technology through creating and running start-up company myself being still student. So idea of students as drive for commercialization process seems to be to be very compelling. Does it make sense?
Pic.1  Spinoff partnerships.
Data from5. PI – Principal investigator
   It looks like it does. European Commission’s Youth Strategy’s one of two overall objectives is “to encourage young people to be active citizens and participate in society”[3]. Students fully involved in capitalization of science and technology naturally seems to be best fulfilment of this objective in field of higher education. However it has been shown that universities have neglected the important role student entrepreneurship plays in the technology transfer process[4]. Despite this, actually in 77% of 47 spinoffs from prestigious US Universities studied elsewhere[5] graduate students play important role. There also 4 main pathways for University spinoff development were identified - in Annex 1 there is good illustration of this and in Picture 1 ratios between various spinoff pathways abundant can be seen. I find it fascinating that 23% of spinoffs are advanced by pure student effort, what is equal amount of ones with “professional” teams with principal investigators and professional, experienced entrepreneurs. This leads to questioning existing focus on researchers and scientists as source and pathway potential science commercialisation, but more importantly can be inspiring for students to deliberately take up such roles.
What students benefit from participating in commercialization?
Actually answer feels to be rather straight forward. However they do not sound too familiar, implying that question itself apparently has been asked too rarely. Here is attempt:
1.       Active participation in commercialization and entrepreneurship broadens view of perspective not only on research topic, but also on ways students can advance their lives;
2.       Clear and overflowing motivation for research work they are doing;
3.       Let’s students to see, that their effort can give great practical result, empowering them to thrive for excellence later;
4.       May outcome in future income, what otherwise is not so easily achieved by pure academic career;
5.       Gives valuable learn-by-doing education, what later by “no fail - no win” strategy can craft students into highly professional and efficient “commercializators”, implementing their skills also long after being student.
6.       Such activities can often lead to lots of useful new friends and connections, including recognition from higher staff of University, what often is perceived one of most useful asset for successful career launch for young people.
7.       Have chance to get lot of “free lunches” by participating in numerous business oriented events and often lot of other “small benefits”, what can and are important maybe only for students. Here I would like to add ability to get significant amount of face-to-face time with PI, professors and other professionals.
Why does this work for students after all?
   Commercialization is often righteously perceived as quite complex process, which requires deep understanding of all: technology, industry, business, intellectual property management and other law, and also require both significant funds and enormous workforce. One can be considered respectable, if he could “check” any of mentioned attributes, but apparently students manage to complete this without any but last. Here I would like to continue with some considerations mainly from my own experience how this is possible:
1.     “Stay hungry, stay foolish” attitude for students is naturally present as it is often quite objectively true. Keeping your eyes open and need for enormous drive in multiple other formulations has been described as key to success not only by Jobs, but by nearly every successful entrepreneur. It is very hard to obtain such state of mind, but it is very easy to lose it by routine, so by age, indeed abundance of such “skill” decreases. So students are “not jet wasted”. By the way, I speculate that noticing that this works early, will help to preserve it also later throughout the life.
2.     Similarly there are other attributes, that students do not have, but what actually makes their engagement in entrepreneurship possible. For example they just do not know that it is complicated. As business plan is being crafted, it may become quite frightening of how many unknowns there are and work and skills will be necessary. However in reality lot of struggles are solved just by efficient combination of step-by-step approach and brute workforce, and luckily chance. Our experience, potentially very useful asset, can give us false signals and freeze us. Similarly there is no pride jet that makes as hesitate to do some basic, simple stuff (e.g. work with screwdriver or wash floors of office) that is often needed simply just to be done, or even to approach some strategically important persons or institutions for help and advice.
3.     Nothing to lose, so nothing to waste as well. This makes initial phases of commercialisation process to be very efficient. Students can live without wage, sleep in labs, work 24/7 and use University’s equipment and staffs advice without any prejudices for free. Often if all such activities would have to be properly financed, nobody would as at such state risk would be much too high to justify such investment.  Once my friend estimated that, if University had tried to fully bill him for services he had used for his initial stage preliminary works for start-up, it would easily go over 100 000 EUR – amount of investment would be possible to obtain  only at later stage of project and would take away half of his potential company. Limited resources can actually drive innovation[6] and help you to cut all actually unnecessary things that takes both funds and time, what is being recently more and more stressed[7] – state again students have naturally.
4.     Failure IS an option. Large investments and cooperation agreements leaves no place for mistake, but that is incompatible with process of development – no fail - no win. Similarly often as people grow older, they take up responsibilities like family, what means it is not possible to risk to loose stable income, what again cessations to go in for risky adventures.
How then such student involvement can be promoted and how can students be assisted?
                Often Technology Transfer Offices (TTO) are ones responsible for commercialization in Universities, but they tend to focus on mentioned “professionals”, leaving students behind. Have gone through this myself, I am sceptical if particular strategic top-down activities could work. This is also explained elsewhere[8]. I would suggest that real catalyst would be right culture, where such student activities would not be confined by regulations, IP rights, measurements and regulations of usage of Universities facility and equipment and overloading senior and junior’s staffs schedules leaving no room for students expressing themselves.  Unfortunately mentioned activities seem to be exact focus of mentioned TTO and also both local and European regulatory policy developers. There are multiple more useful activities that could University try to implement and few offered also offered here on right. Indeed culture and environment can play major role for fostering innovations[9]. However, as biggest struggle particularly for Latvia I see overly in-cultivated strong subornation culture, what practically means that senior staff will not engage in projects and ideas proposed by, in this case, students, leaving them not only without valuable mentoring, access to knowledge, but even making them face additional hurdles placed by those higher to subconsciously defend their fortresses.

University programs and practices that can enhance student involvement in commercialization:1.    Project-based classes on commercialization
2.    Mentoring programs
3.    Accelerator/incubator programs
4.    Business plan competitions
5.    Entrepreneurship education for students
6.    Entrepreneurship education for faculty
7.    Mini prototype grants with entrepreneur focus
8.    Open, free, office type work space
9.    Experience sharing events among students
10. Cross-faculties’ student idea and team formulation events
                Commercialization and innovation in general is often viewed not only as main justification of doing typically high cost research projects, but even as basis for sustainable growth of companies and countries. Also in Latvia’s National Development Plan[10] it is stated that main goal - “breakthrough” - will be achieved through “knowledge based economy”, giving feeling that apparently commercialization and innovation will play significant role here and is definitely advised. It was shown here that particularly students are and can be even more the driving force for such action, so shouldn’t  such approach be openly identified, formulated and implemented also at the highest level of Universities, Research institutions and country in general?

Annex 1. Four Pathways for University Spinoff Development[11].




[4] Grimaldi, Kenney, Siegel, and Wright, 2011
[5] Ewing Marion, Kauffman Foundation. University Tecnology transfrer through enterpreneurship: faculty and students in spinoffs. August 2012. http://goo.gl/AYH7X
[6] The Silver Lining to Scarcity: It Drives Innovation. Harvard Business review. http://goo.gl/DwOmd
[8]Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Policies towards the Commercialization of University Intellectual Property, Brent Goldfarb, Magnus Henrekson. SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance No 463. February 25, 2002 http://swopec.hhs.se/hastef/papers/hastef0463.pdf
[9] The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization. Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman. 2005.  http://goo.gl/RpAue
[10] Latvijas Nacionālais attīstības plāns 2014. – 2020.gadam. http://goo.gl/2nb1e
[11] Ewing Marion, Kauffman Foundation. University Tecnology transfrer through enterpreneurship: faculty and students in spinoffs. August 2012. http://goo.gl/AYH7X
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